Breakfast at Baratie's
by Memphis Lupine
Summary: [AU] In every town, there is a restaurant or store where everyone, regardless of social boundaries and personal grudges, gathers in celebration of life and the pain that goes with it. [Minor edit; chapter iv.]
1. concrete angel: introduction

Breakfast at Baratie's 

by Memphis Lupine

(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)

--

She walks to school with the lunch she packed  
Nobody knows what she's holdin' back  
Wearin' the same dress she wore yesterday  
She hides the bruises with linen and lace  
-  
The teacher wonders but she doesn't ask  
It's hard to see the pain behind the mask  
Bearing the burden of a secret storm  
Sometimes she wishes she was never born  
-  
Through the wind and the rain  
She stands hard as a stone  
In a world that she can't rise above  
But her dreams give her wings  
And she flies to a place where she's loved  
Concrete angel  
-  
Somebody cries in the middle of the night  
The neighbors hear, but they turn out the lights  
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate  
When morning comes it'll be too late

-

Through the wind and the rain  
She stands hard as a stone  
In a world that she can't rise above  
But her dreams give her wings  
And she flies to a place where she's loved  
Concrete angel

-

A statue stands in a shaded place  
An angel girl with an upturned face  
A name is written on a polished rock  
A broken heart that the world forgot

-

Through the wind and the rain  
She stands hard as a stone  
In a world that she can't rise above  
But her dreams give her wings  
And she flies to a place where she's loved  
Concrete angel

-Martina McBride, _Concrete Angel_

--

Story One: Concrete Angel

Introduction

--

        Saturday night turned the sky of Winchester electric, a brilliant cast of fluorescence spilling out of the building at Fifth-and-Maine near the old grocery store two blocks north of the high school, and the wind of advancing spring was loose.  It challenged the sanctity so hailed by those who wished to move to its small location and those who whispered about subsidizing it into the metropolis of New York City, a flash of chaos and noise pouring from each window.  During the week, Baratie's was a quiet restaurant serving to a clientele of quiet couples and small families too harried and sick of fast food to eat anywhere else.  A menu of delicious food at reasonable prices attracted them both, taking in anyone who wanted something to taste so long as they paid and tipped reasonably.  The weekend was the property of the teenagers old enough that they could drive the few dusty streets leading through the wooded New England country to the place never known as the Hangout, as it would be in another place, another time.  It mattered little if they could walk to its entrance in a few minutes time, as most could, as much as showing off their prized trucks and dented cars did. 

        Winchester sprawled across the southern countryside dotted below the affectionately dubbed Big Apple on the map, a town composed of countless expensive homes built in the trees and along the hills just as the rowed townhouses were part of the community.  The high school was an eclectic mix of the poor and the rich, each youth dreaming desperately of the day they could break free of the small town binds and enter the exotic city so near.  They were Goths and cheerleaders, jocks and future rocket scientists, teenagers with no aspiration but to simply _escape_,and those who knew precisely where they were heading and who they were.  The high school students knew everyone's name in the town of two-hundred-twenty-two students readying for college in the four-year interim, with old jokes of their town being one-third of hell known by all.  If you hated someone you saw their face at least once a week, in school or at the old theatre-and-playhouse along the Main street still paved with cobblestones, but mostly at Baratie's.  Space was filled quickly, with people squeezing three more people than usually possible into the small booths for the sake of community and fellowship.  Romances were started and friendships were lost when you were forced into a seat you had not expected to be, and when an elbow digging into your ribs turned out to be the elbow of The One.  It was impossible to live in Winchester and not believe in The One, for that was the single greatest philosophy of the gangly young man named The Sandman.

        Everyone knew The Sandman, a tall graduate of the high school who had lived and breathed in the kitchen for as long as anyone could remember.  He had been a scrawny preadolescent, a child with an oriental name that did not fit his european looks, but his mother, they all agreed, had been one of the more creative people to live there in a while.  She died or left or simply never existed, for when he entered the junior high and forced his way into popularity in spite of his lack of prerequisites such as money, there was no mother.  Baratie's raised him, and they all thought it suiting he help raise Baratie's even further.

        When pressed, no one could rightly say what his real name was, exactly, and confused glances would be shared before someone laughed and joked about the student population and popcorn was thrown amidst groans of disgust.  He was just The Sandman, a moniker adopted for his humorous love of tales with an olden feel, suggested by one of the kids who read with great dedication every comic book he could find.  Even those who did not understand the joke took it on, and the first name was forgotten for way of this new one.  Everyone liked The Sandman, with his curling eyebrows and love for girls and the scented cigarettes he always had, and it was never reported to the officials that he was underage.  That, as someone put it succinctly, would not be cool.

        Sometimes a person they did not know would arrive in town, just as The Sandman and his mother had once been, and the old war veteran who ran Baratie's. 

        She was different as anyone new was different, a sudden flicker in the vision accepted as normal, something exotic that needed to be examined.  She was small, but not short, a girl who looked to be a sophomore but swore she was a senior, with hair the color of carrot-streaked strawberries and a loose dress of pale red.  It belted at the middle, a sleek band of leather knotted around her waist, and the sleeves hung clean over her arms, folds sweeping the underside of her wrists.  She was not hostile, but she was not friendly either, and when asked where she came from, she smiled thinly.

        "Somewhere I had to leave," she answered, and she would sip at the bottled water she had brought in with her.  Gradually, they kept away from her, sensing not a dislike coming from her so much as an intense desire to be alone.  "I'm here with my sister," she continued for the sake of those who would not abandon her so quickly.  "I'm going to be in the senior graduating class this year," for the teens who refused to believe she was eighteen.  A smile that did not reach her eyes signified her nonverbal way of saying, _There is no more.  I can't give anything else._

        The rumors began immediately, the usual bit of malicious gossip that meant little to those who spread it, but a great deal to those who began it and those who were the center.  Farfetched ones about spies and aliens and Elvis Presley coming back from the dead, ones about an abortion and her being married and the fact that maybe she was an undercover cop, _no way, but did you see her tattoos?  _None of it meant anything, though, and they disappeared as midnight fast approached.

        Lacy black dotted her ankles in the form of anklet tattoos, little emblems of interlocked crosses and fish, mingled in with a pirate's symbol every now and then.  When she smiled, though, it mattered very little if she was an alien or a government agent, because they could see something they did not understand.  Bright mixed with dark, sorrow woven in with joy, and the curiosity of those who had never seen someone move of their own free will to Winchester was peaked.

        The Sandman was never as prone to staring as now.

        They thought it hilarious that he kept glancing at her, a lost sort of look on his face as he worked his jaw lightly, chewing on the end of the cigarette pinned in his mouth.  It was funny to the senior who was said to be in his late twenties until he was forced to choke down ash in his shot of whiskey, and then it was death for The Sandman.  A girl dressed in a Hawaiian wrap and a bikini top, casting herself to the mercy of the chill breezes of ending winter with her garb, clasped at his fist and directed his attention to the drinking contest somewhere in one of the darker corners.  The Sandman would live another day.

        At some point, The Sandman adopted the sort of look that stated he thought himself blindingly insane, and he ignored the girl chipped from frozen embers.  He flirted openly with the other girls, showed off his ability to cook over an open flame, and by the time one o'clock rolled around and the war veteran, old Sef, gruffly ordered everyone out, the girl was gone into the early morning darkness.

--

**Notes: **No, the whole thing won't be written in this style, just in case it bugs someone.  This was the introduction to the first story (which will be about three chapters in length, I believe, this notwithstanding).  Please be aware that names can and _will _be changed as I see fit, my apologies to everyone, and, yes, The Sandman is Sanji.  Don't judge me on that too soon, though!  Give me a chance, okay?  ;]

**Pop Culture Reference: **Sanji being called The Sandman.  I was trying to think of something new for him, and it popped into my head.  (My sincerest regards to Neil Gaiman, for the reference to his comic book – which, to be honest, I haven't actually read yet.  Shame on me!)

**Disclaimer: **Still applies (see foreword).

**Feedback: **Please do.  E-mails are welcome at memphis_lupine@hotmail.com, and reviews via the little clicky-box below.

**Written: **April 1, 2003.

**Revised:** ----


	2. concrete angel: i

_Breakfast at Baratie's_

by Memphis Lupine

(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)

--

Story One: Concrete Angel

I

--

        The first period bell rang with a resigned note of shrill air, and she grinned to herself, already tucked neatly away in her desk.  Attending an actual school had been a rarity in the past year and, in contrast with the eleven other teenagers present in the Creative Writing class, she loved the excited feeling that bubbled in her abdomen.  _We're going to do it, _she cheered, toying with her fingers over the crisp edge of her new notebook.  The bold androgynous handwriting she used decorated her notebook with her name and the class' heading, telling her every time she glanced at it that she was free.

        "Good morning, you miscreants and future hoodlums," a raspy female voice executed her thoughts and she looked up, the image of featureless attention.  The elderly woman standing in the fore of the room, a Missus Edith Walston with all the strict sharpness her name brought to mind, glowered with the kind of disappointed glare that must be accumulated over time.  She felt an immediate kinship with the woman, knowing she would most likely not have much in common with the bored students sharing the room with her, and inwardly smiled.  "We'll be working on our historical stories today," Mrs. Walston continued in a dry voice, walking steadily to her short desk and flipping open the text laying plainly on its surface, "and I would like for someone _other _than Mister Ulan to actually finish before the end of the week, if it doesn't kill you."

        She looked up, beady eyes peeking over the half-moon glimmer of her glasses, and she pointed briefly at her with a disparaging quickness. "Speaking of which, Mister Ulan, would you please help Miss," she hesitated to glance at the updated, handwritten roster, "Miss Natalie Tartan."  She crooked the same finger at a boy who was scribbling what appeared to be shorthand notes over an already wrinkled and crammed paper, smiling with a creaking fondness.  "Miss Natalie," she began to explain, turning to the flame-haired girl, "I'm going to send the one student in here who actually gives a damn over to explain what we're doing and what I don't want to see handed in.  Mister Ulan, if you will."  She gestured and turned stiffly on her heel, retiring herself to an existence behind the worn desk.

        Natalie waited patiently, watching him from the corner of her eye as he gathered together what seemed like an impossible amount of paper, sketchpads, and pencils into his arms.  He kicked the faded brown backpack near his chair to the one parallel to it, one exactly next to hers, and promptly dumped the contents of his arms in the seat.  "Be there in a second," he said cheerfully, and he swung over the adjoined desk on the chair, landing and sliding momentarily over the slick tiling.  "Wha!"

        When he regained his balance and somehow arranged the stack of clumsy paper onto his new desk, plopping into it, he turned to face her.  "Nice tattoos," was the first thing he said with an impressed tone in his voice, referring to the black spirals and webbing decorating her arms from an inch or so above her elbow to just below her shoulder.  The aesthetic was meant to imitate lace or delicate spiderwebs, and she thumbed the tight black cloth of her turtleneck sleeveless with a surprised feeling of warmth.  Judging her expression correctly, he grinned.  "I'm not exactly normal, myself," he said as if in answer to an unspoken question, pointing with a resigned look to his long nose and large mouth.

        "I'm Natalie," she said after a moment, rolling her eyes as she spoke, knowing it had already been shared.  He grabbed her pale hand with his dark one and shook firmly, his grin turning only slightly mocking.

        "I'm Ulan Harris," he informed by way of introduction, and he picked open his ragged binder, exposing to the light a ring of silver spirals nearly broken by the weight of countless sheets of paper stuffed into it.  "And I," he furthered, "am a writer.  And an artist."  He smiled sheepishly, adjusting the line of his checkered bandana where it kept the front of his immensely curly black hair from spilling into his eyes.  

        With a bluntness that caught him off guard, she questioned, "Are you black?"  

        "Partly," he answered, picking up a pencil and scribbling something indefinable at the bottom of one of the nearly filled pages.  "Why?  Are you deep south or something?"  He said it teasingly, good-naturedly, and she felt no insult in his words.

        It surprised her, did not fit into her sense of normality, for there to be no insults in speech, and she hated that it surprised her.

        _We're going to do it, _her older sister's voice echoed loudly in her head, and she found a small smile creep its way onto her face.  "Deep south?" she repeated, injecting a disbelieving tone into her words.  "The hell are you talking about?  If I was deep south, do you honestly think I'd only have two eyes?  Seriously."  She rolled her brown eyes for emphasis, and he grinned a wide gash of teeth at her, something innately friendly.

        "Point taken," he replied breezily, tearing the scrap of paper at the bottom out of his binder and folding it into perfect fourths, then eighths.  "My mom and I went down to Alabama one time," and he flicked the folded paper at her, "and there was this construction everywhere.  Alabama's about two thousand years behind everyone else, I swear, because we're driving along and suddenly, there's these roads that aren't even dirt, they're like this kind of Paleolithic rubble the state legislature's decided is worth digging up.  Honest to God," he crossed his heart empathetically, glancing at the ceiling for support as she watched, fascinated, "there were dinosaur bones sticking up everywhere.  They have them strung up for telephone wires and stuff.  Brontosaurus neck is a Cellular South connection tower.  We figured they were going to replace the roads with that mortar stuff the Egyptians used, and maybe in a hundred years, they'll put cement down or something.

        "Anyway," he interrupted himself, and she started laughing.  "What's so funny?" he asked innocently.

        "You're an idiot," she chuckled.

        "Aw," he faked a Southern belle voice, fluttering his eyelashes at her, "ya'll jus' sayin' that."

--

        "Spaghetti," Ulan stated over the din of the high school's collective lunch, scooting his tray along and helping himself to a reasonable amount of the otherwise indefinable mess.  She looked at it dubiously, then, with an extreme look of apprehension crossing her features, ladled some onto her own neon yellow tray.  "At least," he continued in a doubtful voice, "I think it's spaghetti.  It hasn't killed anyone yet, so it isn't the chicken alfredo."

        "You want spaghetti in your hair?" she asked pleasantly, lifting her tray over her head with one hand, the other holding her creative writing notebook to her hip.  She trailed after him as he bulldozed his way through a group of the beautiful people, keeping her tray carefully out of knocking distance.

        "Don't even joke about my hair," he retorted, taking a place at an empty circular table near the back, between a locked door leading into the woods and the wall lined with smudged windows.  "It's the only thing about my appearance I'm really proud of," and he lifted his fork, spearing a tiny fraction of meat, or what might be meat.  "If I die, tell my mother never to wear the red dress again," he mouthed around the food and she gave him a dirty look.

        "Talking with food in mouth," pointed Natalie, taking a testing bite and chewing once before swallowing.  "Mmm: bland, and yet unsatisfying."  Shrugging, she took a few more small bites and scraped her teeth over her tongue, keeping her lips firmly placed together, dark maroon lipstick smearing just the faintest in the corner.  "This is daily fare?"

        "Alas, if only it weren't so," he muttered, twisting a clump of slightly cold noodles around his fork and shoveling it into his mouth.  Swallowing, he continued, "I still insist I found a gym sock in my burrito one day."  At her _are you insane or just stupid? _look, he hastened to clarify.  "We're not talking Taco Bell burrito, which, by the way, is still nasty, but school burrito, where they recycle items from the lost and found for construction purposes.  Cardboard makes a cheap substitute for dry tortillas, anyway.  I bite into this burrito, and suddenly I'm pulling threads out of my braces, thank God for miracles and orthodontists deciding I didn't need them anymore.  I pull out a particularly gruesome victim of Joel Underwood's feet from my mouth, and I haven't eaten Mexican since."  He bit into the lump of spaghetti and made a face.  

        "That's disgusting," she made sure to inform him just as he said in an odd voice, "And speaking of Joel Underwood…"

        She blinked, following his gaze and spying a senior of average height and not-exactly-average musculature, and instantly recognized the genre.  "Jock from Hell," she stated wryly, twirling her fork in the rounded lump on her tray and finding it alarmingly difficult.  "The kind of guy who stifles the creative individuality of the singular human."

        Ulan looked at her as if she was an angel descended from heaven to speak the word of the Lord.  "The new girl speaks truth," he agreed, himself dressed in a clashing adornment of yellow jeans and a long, shining black shirt with one long sleeve and the other torn into a lack of sleeve.  "But that's not the only reason I loathe Joel Underwood and wish for him to explode in a horrible manner during every pep rally ever held under the roof of this high school," he added without batting an eye.

        "Oo," she said with an arched eyebrow and sly grin, "do tell."

        He merely lifted one elongated brown finger and stabbed it decisively in an area near the aforementioned Jock from Hell, his face morphing into a mask of wistfulness.  She turned obligingly, slurping at a meaty strand of flavorless spaghetti, and questioned absently, "The brunette?"  He shook his head no.  "The girl with obvious stuffage of bra?"  He gave her an exasperated look.  "The guy in the muscle shirt?" she asked innocently, and he rolled his eyes, stabbing once more.  She squinted and followed the line directly, straight to a fairy-blonde girl who appeared as if she had been cut straight from the pages of a fairy tale.  "My, my," she grinned.

        "That," he said in a dreamy tone of voice, "is Chamomile Eastwind, the most popular girl at school.  She has amethyst eyes and, to quote a certain popular teenflick, 'I burn, I pine, I perish.'"

        "Damn," she found fit to comment.  "Couldn't choose an easier girl, could you?"

        He smirked at her.  

        "Nope, not happening, I don't want to deal with guys right now," she forced out in a light voice, hearing the hated voice in her head as it taunted her to say why.

        _We're going to do it._

"Anyway," he was saying, "she's always been weaker than everybody else, and no one knows why.  I've gone to the same drama camp as her for the past three summers, and I manage to spend time with her there, and we act like friends, but as soon as the summer internment is over and school starts again," he shrugged helplessly, then made a repelled face at his lunch.  "Maybe the spaghetti _is _lethal."

        "She sounds like a bitch," Natalie said with a mirroring shrug, tossing her fork to the tray and lifting a napkin to rub at her tongue.  "This food is horrendous."

        "Eat at Baratie's," he responded automatically, as if rehearsing an old line or advertisement, the glorious beauty of amethyst-eyed Chamomile Eastwind seemingly forgotten.  "Try to get there when Sef or The Sandman is on duty, because they really are the best cooks.  They only work at night, though, so it might be kinda hard if your older sister's a stickler for curfews."

        "The Sandman," she repeated in a tone that meant something or other along the lines of _are you messing around again?  _She walked behind him once more, dumping the chunky remnants of her school lunch into the one trashcan with a sadistic relish."Like, puts you to sleep Sandman?  Or Neil Gaiman spooky Sandman?"

        "Neither," Ulan answered, sliding his tray and fork into the slot that led to the washing room.  "He's his very own personal kind of Sandman.  He smokes, he chases girls, and he swears a blue streak."

        "Wow," Natalie commented as they left the cafeteria for pursuit of the library and a planned search for David Eddings books, "he sounds like a dream."

        "You burn, you pine, you perish?" suggested her newfound friend and social salvation.

        "I'll leave that brand of idiocy to you," she retorted airily.

        "Ouch," and he held the library door open for her.

        _I'm going to make it, _she thought to herself, and it didn't seem so bad anymore.

--

**Notes: **Ah.  I haven't written friendship stuff in so long, I'd forgotten how much fun it can be.  (I really hope it was as much fun to read as it was to write.  And, yes, I know it wasn't very long, and I apologize.)  I do sort of know where I'm going with Story One, and it's mostly going to serve as an introduction of everyone (more or less).  Ulan is Usopp, Natalie is Nami, Chamomile is Kaya, and that's it for new names and whatnot.  I did my best to stay close (or somewhat close) to the original name (and I have no idea if Ulan is an actual name, but I liked writing it).  I mean no insult to Alabama at all, but they _do _have crappy road systems.  And the 'more than two eyes' thing is a reference to the old joke of incest in the deep south.  Which might be true for all I know, but I haven't been living in Mississippi long enough to know.  *winks*

**Pop Culture Reference: **Neil Gaiman again, as well as the old Sandman stories and all.  A line shamelessly filched from '10 Things I Hate About You,' Cameron talking about Bianca, and a reference to David Eddings – he's one of my favorite fantasy writers, he and his wife Leigh.  

**Disclaimer: **Don't break my heart.  You know I don't own them.

**Feedback: **Still highly encouraged.  :']  I would really like to know if I'm writing okay.

**Written: **April 1, 2003.

**Revised:** ----


	3. concrete angel: ii

_Breakfast at Baratie's_

by Memphis Lupine

(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)

--

Story One: Concrete Angel

II

--

        She woke to find herself wet with the peculiar humid stickiness of sweat that creeps into the pores, her eyes stinging and wet.  Breathing deeply, hard, she brushed her hands over her eyes hard, rubbing steadily at the softer glue of tears trickling down clammy cheeks, and put the heels of her palms across her eyelids.  A heavy breath out helped calm her nerves, grounding her in the small darkness of the room claimed as hers in the smallest townhouse along the street.  Turning to the side, she fumbled with the twisting switch of her bedside lamp and finally forced it to spread golden light through the shade screwed onto the white beams over the electric bulb.

        _Deep breaths, relax, _she instructed herself firmly, balling her hands in the slick pale sheets and flexing her fingers back out.  She fisted her hands and then spread them open once more repeatedly, the steady actions soothing her quietly.  _There's nothing here to hurt me.  We're safe here; he can't follow us.  He won't follow us.  Safe, we're safe.  _

        The sudden constriction of a growing sob cut her thoughts off, startling her as she felt the tears tumble haphazardly from her dark eyes in silver ribbons, and she flung the covers away from her bare legs, pushing feet clad in socks to the carpeted floor.  Threading slender fingers through her fiery hair, she curled over, wrinkling her toes under her feet, and gasped the thin, hiccupping moans of someone crying, air catching in her throat every few seconds.  The sound of footsteps, light and cautious in the hallway, interrupted her briefly and she glanced up between strands of copper-tinted silk and curved palms to see her sister standing indecisively in the doorway.  A noisy hiccup slipped free of her mouth and she started laughing amidst her tears, the situation striking her as absurd for the moment.

        "Hey, N-Nolia," she giggled sadly, lowering her hands to rest them in her lap, the creased face of Sylvester lining her oversized white t-shirt.  "I didn't mean to wake you."

        "Oh, Natalie," her sister murmured, and there was a soft creak in the protesting bedsprings as she sat gracefully beside the smaller of the two, pulling her into a loose hug.  "It's okay, I was up anyway," she continued, patting her shoulder comfortingly, "and I needed to check on you."  Pulling back a little, sweeping a clump of dyed hair behind her ear, she asked, urgently, "Are you having nightmares again?  Would you like to tell me about it?"

        Natalie shook her head, sniffling and shrinking her arms into her baggy sleeves, wiping at the sticky fluid coating her face and smiling lopsidedly.  Tattooed arms gradually left her sleeves, fingers clasping together in her lap and hanging between her legs as a makeshift pendulum, and she tossed her head from one side to the other.  "No," she said slowly, fixing her gaze on a spot in the wall opposite her, "not a nightmare.  I don't think it was a nightmare, because I don't remember anything.  I just…woke up like this."  She gestured helplessly at her untidy appearance: eyes rimmed crimson and short hair twirled into small knots, strands resting on end at spots.  

        Nolia rubbed her hands over her younger sister's arms, taking on the motherly influence in spite of her own youthful appearance, and she offered gently, "You can stay home today, if you want to.  I'll be working all day in the office, and you're more than welcome to stay home and watch t.v. if you don't feel like going to school."  She touched a loose strand of red hair and smiled encouragingly, sparking a tentative reply in the like from the redhead.  "I don't want you to feel pressured here."

        She was more than willing to accept that offer, wanting to take advantage of an opportunity to be lazy, but she also knew she would refuse it.  "No thanks, big sis," she replied, startling her older sister.  "I made a friend at school yesterday and I'd really like to see 'em again."

        A look of unacknowledged relief passed over Nolia's features, sagging her shoulder and turning her lips into a more relaxed smile at that most desired of things.  "Really?" she questioned almost eagerly, leaning forward and creating a sillier air in the room.  "What's her name?"

        "Oh, it's a guy," Natalie corrected her, "Ulan Harris."  At her sister's immediate expression of restrained concern, she quickly added, "Don't worry, he's completely safe.  He has this huge crush on some popular chick who doesn't know he exists."  

        Nolia sighed, rubbing her hand over the other girl's strawberry locks and standing, and asked, "Would you like me to fix you breakfast?"

        "Oh, well, since you offered," Natalie smiled tremulously, to her sister's lovingly rude face, "I'd like French toast, three sunny-side-up eggs, and five strips of bacon.  With orange juice."

        Nolia laughed and pressed a swift kiss to the side of Natalie's clammy head, giving her one more firm, soothing hug before pacing into the narrow hallway of the townhouse's second floor.  Rhythmic thumping signaled her descent down the stairs in the predawn morn, and the smile on her face quivered, then fell.  Shivering to herself, Natalie pulled her knees up to her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut as tightly as she could manage, trying to bring back the levity of the day before instead of the darkness of years gone.

        _Quiet, and he won't hear, _the old mantra lilted in a listless manner in her head.  _Freeze, and he won't see.  _The room was cold.

--

        "You smell deliciously fruity this morning," Ulan said by way of greeting, his legs stuck firmly in the empty seat before his newly adopted desk.  He was scribbling in his binder again, cartoon doodles of the few various students also in the room, waiting the three minutes until the bell rang and Mrs. Walston grudgingly recognized their collective existence.  The bandana was gone, replaced by a fluorescent green hair-tie that kept his abundantly curled hair out of his face and near the base of his skull, sleek black curls glinting under the quivering white lights above.  She was not able to determine if she was relieved that the bright hair-tie matched his uncoordinated clothing of a brilliant orange t-shirt and camouflage jogging pants.

        "Tangerine perfume, and I hope you aren't coming on to me, think of how poor mademoiselle Eastwind would feel," she replied in turn, dropping her scarlet crochet knapsack to the floor and her single-subject notebook on her desk.  "Speaking of which, are you aware I share the same home economics class with the lady popular?"  She grinned at his feigned disinterest and gradual sinking in his seat, his face distorted by embarrassment and anxious desire for no one else to hear.  "Did I say something?"

        He sheltered his face from view with his slowly dying binder and grumbled, "I should've never told _anyone _about that, and now I know why."  His binder dipped a little, exposing his narrowed dark eyes and an unhappy frown, and he glared weak daggers at Natalie.  "Please put your mocking on hold."

        "Sor-ry," she laughed, moving forward to rest her elbow on her desk and settle her chin in her hand as she smirked.  "I've never seen a guy look so mortified before," she confessed happily, and he moaned in despair, letting his binder fall flatly on his face as he dropped his arms limply by his sides.  Behind its protective grey shielding, he muttered things that were distorted into a low rumbling and she laughed.  "Don't tell me you haven't told her yet," she teased, watching him pull himself back into a proper sitting position as the bell shook with its annoying scream. 

        "I haven't," he spoke in a near-whisper, grabbing up his pencil and drawing formless shapes on the cover paper's margin nervously.  

        She arched an eyebrow, crossing her arms over her buttoned jacket, and leaned over the metal bar connecting her chair to her platform desk, staring at him.  "With _your_ annoyingly loud and creepy nature?" she jested.  "Good God, reality has just shifted."

        "I haven't even known you a day," he said defensively.  "Nobody thinks I'm creepy after only a day.  A week, maybe, but never just a day."

        "I'm gifted," she retorted in lazy rebuttal, quickly undoing the buttons lining her shirt as the surly teacher began listing off names.  "But, really, why haven't you told her?  You never know until you try and all that shit teachers tell you until you develop a personality."

        He snorted, dotting the end of something that might have been a squid had it not been for the large square decorating its head, and slipped the pencil into the thin plastic pouch posted onto the inside of the binder's flap.  "Gee, Natalie, if only we all were half as brave," began Ulan pleasantly, and he rotated his head to look at her, "as--oh, God!  My eyes!"  He threw his hands over his face, nearly overturning his desk as he lurched away.  "I-I'm going blind," and he made a dramatized show of it.

        Blushing, she glared at her low-cut shirt, a tight affair of spaghetti straps and a bad mix of tie-dye, and she shrugged her jacket back on, overlapping the sides of cloth.  "It's all I had clean to wear," she explained huffily, turning her chin snobbily up to the glimmering light in the ceiling.  

        "The bleeding," he moaned in reply, "oh, the agonizing pain and foulness of what mine eyes hath seen..."

        "Mister Ulan, Miss Natalie," interjected the rasping creak of Mrs. Walston, and both looked up, one miffed, the other peeking between obscuring fingers.  "While I'm quite sure your lives are simultaneously riveting and thought-provoking, this assignment is far more important to your scholastic career than whether or not Miss Natalie's attire fits within the realm of school dress code."  A few ill-timed snickers passed through the class and a deadly glare sent via Natalie's dark brown eyes caused more than one to fall instantly silent, suddenly finding their neglected work far more intriguing.

        "Sorry," he whispered after a few minutes of steady writing, taking care to see that they were not being watched by the teacher striking off papers at her desk.  "About doing that whole routine in front of the class."  He flipped a completed page, the paper indented by his forceful script, and started the stately work of logging down the words scrolling through his head.

        "Whatever," she replied in an equally low voice, giving him a disparaging expression that warned it would not be forgotten as quickly as her slang implied.  "You never answered my question though: why not tell her and get it over with?"

        "Okay, one," he ticked off the accompanying finger on his free hand, noting a few fleeting ideas in the margin so he might refer to them later, "I'm really bad at confrontation.  I hate it, which is part of the reason I'm socially inept, and I'd prefer to not be disemboweled by Joel 'look at me, I'm a dickhead' Underwood before I graduate.  As if he knows what disemboweled means anyway.  Two," a second finger flipped up as he continued talking, his voice unperturbed and sarcastically monotone, "what safer love is there than love from afar?  I'd rather have an unrequited love known by few if any," he glowered at her comically, "than a mocked love known by all."

        She contemplated his words, writing a great deal more carefully than his hasty, loping pace; when he wrote, it seemed like he could find no way to write fast enough, and she preferred to advance slowly, writing after spending time on her words and phrasing.  "Did you see _'Can't Hardly Wait,'_ that Jennifer Love Hewitt movie?" she asked rhetorically, frowning as the lead in her number-two pencil snapped with a clean break.  "The nerd got the popular girl in that movie."

        "It's a feel-good teen flick that focuses on one night in a budding relationship," he replied.  "As if it's inspiration for every loser who manages to fall for the rich girl."

        "Billy Joel," was her airy response as she stood, twirling her dulled pencil in her fingers while she walked the few paces to get near the one pencil sharpener in the room.  "_'Uptown Girl_._'_"  Jamming the pencil's point into place, she swirled the handle around perfunctorily, listening for the sound of the blades passing cleanly over wood smoothed too far for them to cut any further.  

        "Reminds me, today's Chickflick Tuesday at the Wallerbee," Ulan all but mouthed after she reclaimed her seat, avoiding Mrs. Walston's prying look deftly.  "Y'know, that movie theatre near Baratie's?  They used to have plays there, too, but I think someone got killed and they had to stop letting the emotionally unbalanced high school kids perform there, imagine that.  Skeletons in the closet, indeed," he snorted, waving his pencil loftily and in twirling motions with little purpose or aim.  "In any case, they're supposed to be showing _'One Fine Day' _tonight.  Nothing stimulates the brain like an exploited, hurried movie that appeals to middle-aged housewives."

        "Mmm, George Clooney," was Natalie's dreamy response.

        "Mister Ulan, I am most serious when I ask you to be quiet."  Mrs. Walston's voice carried a note of warning that was clear, and he grinned widely.

        "Mrs. Walston, did you know that Australia has a breed of cow known as the _Helomis rapidae_?" he demanded in a cheerful tone, a mild undercurrent of cheekiness lining it.  "It's a peculiar kind of bovine that grazes on the remains of the wild Aborigine chipmunk, _Felonious daleius_, and it's been known to attack the occasional moose with intent to mousse."

        Natalie rolled her eyes and pressed the point of her pencil to the paper of her notebook as Ulan proceeded to invent things no one in their right mind could conceivably fall for.  Their teacher appeared to be of the same opinion, but she merely nodded congenially and smiled her withered, affectionate smile at the star pupil.  Five minutes came and went, and he finally wound down from the imaginative lecture he had apparently grown a little too passionate about, nearly convinced himself of the Australian cow's endangered position.  Several of their classmates clapped, those sleeping snored in quiet cacophony, and she found her mind stuck in an unfortunate groove, frowning as she struggled to figure out what next to write.  _What the hell,_ she thought in awed sarcasm, _made me think I could write a story set in Gaul?  God, like I know anything about history, especially about what the hell the Celtics were like._

"And behold," Ulan was muttering, "there was light!"  He stabbed his pencil to the paper in a practiced ending mark, dotting in bold, smeared black the last period bringing to a conclusion his thirteen-page opus.  She stared at him, feeling a sense of foreboding doom in her chest at his seemingly endless supply of insane creativity, and he flashed a toothy smile at her that verged suspiciously on smirk.  "I'm done," he said sweetly.

        "I hate you," she informed him, and he stuck his tongue out.  "Gross.  If you're trying to offend me beyond reasonable comprehension," continued she in a polite manner, "you're doing quite well."

        "Right, okay, fine, I'm an idiot, blah-blah, blah-blah," he waved his hand dismissively, shifting in his seat so he was in it sideways.  "Try to get your sister's permission to go to the theatre tonight, okay?  It's no fun flicking popcorn immaturely at a big screen without someone punching you in the arm and telling you to stop it, what do the people in front of you think?"  The closest look he had to a pathetic _I'm a poor puppy dog, aren't my eyes adorably weepy? _look adorned his face expressively.

        She studied his words thoughtfully, wrinkling her nose as she considered her options.  On the one hand, she and Nolia had only been living in Winchester for not quite a week yet, and she knew it would worry her beloved elder sister to no end if she stayed out to all hours.  The other hand included a surprisingly close friendship developed in the past twenty-four hours and a George Clooney film, which in and of itself deserved her whole and undivided rapturous attention.  _We're free, now, and we'll do whatever the hell we want to, _she had told Nolia fiercely those four years ago when they first escaped.

        "I'll call her and ask to go," Natalie conceded with a weary sigh she did not mean, laughing at his satisfied grin, that wide twist of his pouty lips exposing gleaming rows of teeth.  "But I'm warning you," and she shook her finger in teasing alarm, "if you ruin my capability to drool over the male lead, I'll be forced to beat you senseless with a stick."

        The bell rang, interrupting her without preamble or concession, and all eyes turned to the front of the room, staring perplexedly at the innocent red square placed directly over the center of the chalkboard.  "I've only been coming here since yesterday," she began slowly, "but I'm pretty sure that kind of rang early."  She turned to look at Ulan, fingers toying with the edge of the second page in her notebook, nails scraping in soft ruffles across the tightly stacked paper, and noticed with some trepidation his sheer look of horror.

        "Aw, damn," he wailed.  "It's assembly schedule!"  The rest of the class shared approving moans of disgusted acceptance, three or four slinking up and grabbing their gear in clumsy arms to vanish into the gradually filling hallway.  He scooped up his loose backpack, flipping open the unzipped main pocket and letting the faded brown reveal the plastic-lined interior of relative darkness.  One arm gently shoved the disorganized piles of paper, writing utensils, and a few books into the creased opening, and he flicked the zipper shut.  Tossing his backpack over his shoulder resignedly, Ulan grouchily clambered to his feet and gave her a sorrowful look.

        "I'll bet second period'll be shortened, too," she surmised, and he nodded in apathetic recognition as they made their reluctant way to the thin doorway.  Sparing a farewell wave to the mind-numbingly bored Mrs. Walston, who looked as if she could not possibly be happier that her first period class was over sooner than normal, she split from Ulan, headed in a different direction.  "Thank you, God," she prayed softly, "for letting home economics be shortened today.  Bless You in everything I aim to do, and may the rest of the day go as swiftly."

        "Oh cruelest of ironies," she heard Ulan faux-sobbing down the opposite end of the hallway, and she laughed to herself, placing a hand on the bulky door leading into the fluorescent ivory of her second period class.  She pushed it open, one hand wrapped tightly over the lacy strap of her crochet knapsack and the other clutching her beloved notebook, and stepped into the brightness.  Blinking rapidly to dissuade the sunspots lining her vision, she picked a path to the chair centered at one of the nine small, round tables she distantly recalled as being her assigned seat.  

        "You're the new girl!" a loud voice declared, startling her nearly witless while she dumped her knapsack unceremoniously to the floor, and Natalie collapsed into her plastic chair.  "Crap, I'm sorry," the same voice interjected in hasty, embarrassed apology, and on the opposite side of the table two girls of identical appearance seated themselves in twin chairs.  They both had hair dyed a midnight blue that faded into a slightly unattractive pastel shade at the curled ends, where the dye had not been as tenacious, and builds that matched one another perfectly.  "I'm Tanya Wagner," the girl who had startled her said sheepishly, offering a calloused hand as a token of her esteem.  Eyes of a darker brown than her own gleamed behind oversized glasses.

        "And I'm Katya Wagner," her twin added, dipping her head in greeting and folding her hands on the table.  She had dark blue eyes in opposition with her mirror image's black chocolate, and she radiated an aura of more or less peace, while the just-introduced Tanya all but screamed excitability.  "We've been moved by Mister Hall to share your table, since you're all alone over here and the table we were at previously was overcrowded."

        Tanya turned to Katya, a thoughtful expression crossing her cherubic features.  "Think we can convince Mister Hall to let Cham sit with us?" she questioned, and the quieter of the two frowned, considering this idea.

        Natalie looked at them both as if they could only be weirder by spitting frogs out their collective ears.

        "I don't know," Katya answered, ignoring Natalie's questionable welcoming.  "Let's ask Mister Hall, shall we?"

        "Mister Hall!" Tanya promptly bellowed, and Natalie dropped her face into her hands, already convinced she would never be happy in the apparent hell of home economics.  "Mister Hall, sir, halloo!"  She waved her hand in frantic beckoning as the bell rang, loudly signifying the end of the four-minute break and the beginning of the second-class period.  The several students accompanying them in class, the majority female, save for male seniors who had pushed it off until the final semester in fear, all glanced as one at the table in the back, closest to the stoves.  Chamomile Eastwind, silver blonde hair tied expertly into a stylishly braided knot at the top of her head, decorative wisps lining her delicate face, winked at her friends, aware of their chosen ploy.  Natalie saw the unforgettable mug that was Joel Underwood peering around the tiny blonde's slender shoulder with an expression that could only be read as openly, inexplicably hostile.

        "Tanya," Katya groaned in long-accepting exasperation, used to her sister's blunt methods and somewhat insensitive actions, before adding her own voice to the cry.  "Mister Hall, would Chamomile please be allowed to sit with us and," her voice drifted as she looked at the redhead for assistance.

        "Natalie Tartan," she deadpanned, and she lifted her knapsack into her lap, working it open and sliding her notebook into its depths.

        "Natalie Tartan!" echoed Tanya triumphantly.

        The bald man in the front, dressed in an impeccable suit that fairly declared him an embittered ex-professor, gave her the sort of look that suggested he could care less.  "Eastwind, shove," he finally spoke, his tone only adding to his rudely sardonic aura.  Joel began protesting in a deep voice, and Mr. Hall slowly switched a pointedly cold gaze to the jock until he stumbled in his insistent speech and fell to a surly silence.  "Thank you, Underwood, for sharing your opinion with me."

        Chamomile stood swiftly, picking up into her reed-slender arms the small rippled green binder she had set before her, an expensive leather purse colored into a pale shade of clover usually only seen around Easter cast over her arm.  "Hey," she greeted softly, scooting out the one empty seat at the table once carrying Natalie alone as a guest.  She wiggled her binder onto the flat surface and tucked her purse under the table, knocking it carefully between her heeled feet, and she smiled a beatific smile at Natalie.  "I'm Chamomile Eastwind," she continued in the same quiet voice, shivering her chair closer to Natalie as the twins, casting haphazard glances at the insensitive instructor writing out the day's objectives on the board, did so as well.  

        "So I've heard," Natalie whispered right back, feeling her mild bias against the small senior fade in spite of her stubborn belief that anyone who could treat her newly claimed best friend rudely was undeserving of kindness.  A curious thought, one devious and a typically underhanded ploy, developed nearly instantly in her mind, and she smiled charmingly.  Encouraged, Chamomile tilted her head to the side and maintained her smile whilst the twins started hurriedly noting what was being writ on the board.  Motioning to the disgruntled and sulking figure of Joel, she asked in a purposefully non-sneaky voice, "He your boyfriend?"

        "Oh, yes," Chamomile smiled, her dark violet eyes glimmering with pride, and Natalie, prone to making snap judgments, decided to take back her charitable thoughts.  "We've been dating since the junior prom, you know, and we get along famously."  She glanced at her perfect nails, sprinkled with glitter over the baby pink paint on each curved swell, and the faintest hint of hesitation crossed her angelic features. 

        Natalie grinned.

        Katya commented innocently, "Say, aren't you friends with Ulan Harris?"  At Tanya's blank look, she prodded her sister in the ribs, earning an _oof_ and a returned jab around or near her digestive tract, and shared a brief, conspirator's wink with Natalie.  It was unnoticed by both Tanya and Chamomile, the former being too busy rubbing irritatedly at her ribcage and the latter twisting a strand of hair between her fingers in a sudden interest with the details of her appearance.  Natalie's grin, if possible, widened even further, and she masked it with a poised hand, the corners of her mouth twisting slyly.  "He's always struck me as unbelievably weird and," she gave Natalie a quick, apologizing twitch of her lips, evidence of an old goal showing on her face as she spoke, "he's such a nerd.  How can you be friends with him?"

        "He's not all that weird," Chamomile interrupted anxiously, her wide eyes flickering up for the quickest of moments before she adopted a more self-controlled air and picked at a nonexistent hangnail.  "We've, um, gone to the same summer camp and all for the past few years."

        "Two years," Katya corrected gently, to Natalie's immense amusement.

        "No, Katya, three years," Tanya corrected, in turn, her tone bored, though she, too, winked sneakily at Natalie.  It would take little effort to determine the Wagner girls had long thought Chamomile was dancing around a subject that needed far less dancing, and even Natalie, who had only just become acquainted with this example of the dainty social structures each high school had individually, could see it.  

        "He's really sweet," defended Chamomile in a muffled voice, having dug out a powder-case from her purse and flipped it open, nervously reapplying blush to her pale cheeks.  "And I'd like to think we're friends."

        "Friends, Tanya," scolded Katya.

        "Oh, but of course, Katya," responded Tanya in wide-eyed approval.

        "Not likely," Natalie snorted into her still-poised hand, and a trio of heads, long since ignoring Mr. Hall's repeated instructions to not play with the matches in the back when baking, whipped around to face her.  Both Katya and Tanya had skeptical, but knowing glints to their eyes, having already come to the conclusion that the school's new addition would be a co-conspirator, and Chamomile had a worried, albeit confused look.

        "Excuse me?" Chamomile asked politely, her face working against her efforts for mildly concerned nonchalance.  "By what do you mean?"

        Natalie expelled a breath, the familiar frustration welling deep inside at the knowing bad things happened to people she cared about, be it someone she had known her entire life or an odd boy who had to have been her soul's brother or something, _and I can't do anything about it, _she thought furiously.  She dragged that anger to the surface of her consciousness and let it line her otherwise calmly accusing words.  "Ulan and I talked, and he informed me," she started in a placating tone, crossing her fingers over one another bit by bit, "that while you're at camp together, you get along just fine, you're nearly inseparable.  But, and here's the funny part, as soon as you get back to school, it's like you don't even remember he exists."

        A memory, then, tracing through her mind in a blurring quickness that arrived and dissipated in mere seconds though it turned her blood to ice and her thoughts to sludge: -_king bitch, don't you try and pretend I don't exist.  Stop crying!  I hate it when you cry; you're just trying to play me for a fool.  I'm your only friend, and you know that, you've always known that.  Don't I buy you dresses, pretty things to look at?  You keep trying to use me, and if you think crying will help you--!  Deceiver, that's what you are, and if you don't stop that damn weeping, I'll break your perfect little no--_

"That's not true," and Chamomile's broken whisper broke through the hated recollection, helping Natalie, caught off-balance, shove away the remembrance.  The fairy girl looked up, her face almost helpless in its countenance, and she swallowed thickly, her fingernails pinching into her palms.  "It's not like that at all, Natalie," she swallowed a second time, lowering her eyes to her hands once more.  "He never tries to talk to me in the halls, either, you know, and it…it isn't as simple as everyone makes it seem.  There's so much social stigma if you talk to the wrong people, and my father only wants me to have the best.  If you spend time with a certain group, it's more impressive in interviews and so forth."  She was a china doll with a chiming voice gradually winding down as the seconds ticked by, the drone of Mr. Hall fading into the background along with the wall and the chalkboard's dusty imprints.  "I _have_ to avoid him."

        "Bullshit," Natalie snapped back, and she was surprised at her own aggression just as the twins were.

        A wildly startled expression flickered as a glorious lightbulb might on Chamomile's perfect face, and then, noiselessly, a faint trickle of crimson tipped out of her Roman nose.  The bead was fascinatingly out of place, forming a wavering line of equal width as it tumbled down the inner curve of her cheek toward the partly opened corner of her mouth.  "Oh," she said in muted understatement.  Grasping at the lapels of her purse, she fumbled it open, touching fingers momentarily to her nose and clotting to the best of her ability the bleeding.

        _Oh, God, what did I do, _screamed through Natalie's head, the sound of a child she once was upon being discovered with a shattered vase.  

        Chamomile peeled a tissue out of a package of fresh Kleenex, balling it into a thin wad and clamping it firmly with alarming expertise to the growing stem of blood.  "Headache," she murmured in weak explanation to Natalie and the twins, each face frightened, though Natalie's was understandably more so.  "Mister Hall, I need to go to the nurse's," she called, keeping her face low in shame and clutching her purse tightly in her thin grip as she hurried out the closed door.  Her binder was left on the table, a silent reminder of her abandonment, and the guilt nearly tore Natalie apart.

        _It's my fault._

"Don't think it's your fault," Katya said urgently while the class about the sudden trio grew back into its original ordered chaos.  It seemed an accepted, normal part of life for each of the teenagers, and Natalie wondered how the bleeding could ever be thought normal.  "Chamomile has some minor healthy problems."

        "Minor my ass," snorted Tanya discouragingly and Katya glared, and finally nodded in grudging agreement.  She leaned forward over the table, making sure to fix her brown eyes steadily on Natalie's lighter ones in a way that told her _you did not do it.  It's horrible, but it isn't your fault.  These things happen.  _"We've known Cham since the third grade, when her family moved here," she began, lowering her voice out of either respect or a fear of the teacher's currently irked nature. "And she's always gotten sick really easily."

        "It usually only happens," Katya interjected, her voice pitched in low speech as she tacked on her words to Tanya's, her twin subsiding in respectful wait, "when she gets too emotional.  If she gets too sad or angry or even happy, we can't make her laugh too hard, because it," she gestured with vague helplessness in the general direction of the door.  "Well," Katya sighed, "what just happened happens.  Nosebleeds, headaches, and sometimes she gets sick."

        "But we aren't supposed to tell anybody, though," said Tanya quickly, her tone clearly impressing the thought that she did not want to speak anymore.  "She doesn't like to tell people," came the abrupt continuation, and she gently sidled the binder to herself, pinning it with her own textbooks.  Into an unzipped duffel she ducked the various books, shuffling them into a loose resemblance of order and pattern that was thrust into whispered shadows by the glint of light overhead passing over the plastic fibers.  The soft _zz_-_shhhhh_ of the zipper twining closed along its clasping rails cut through the murmuring chatter preceding the bell's cued ring, a sharp explosion of sound that dusted through the thought and quiet fallen over the trio of girls.

        "See you later," smiled Katya thinly, tossing her own half-filled duffel's wide strap over her leanly muscled shoulder.  She found her footing quickly, effortlessly, and Natalie stood a great deal slower, her face twisting in peculiar thought as Tanya echoed her twin's motions.  "And don't worry about it," she added again, her smile changing into a truthfully kind curl of her lips.  "Cham'll be fine, and she'll be back tomorrow."

        "Hell," Tanya grinned lasciviously, pointing her thumb at Joel, "if he has anything to do with it, she'll be at the Wallerbee tonight, cozy in his rippling arms."  She pushed her duffel behind her hip, letting it rest against the back of her rounded, jean-covered thigh, and she rolled her eyes in distaste.  She stuck her tongue out at Joel as he strolled out the door, amidst a group of adoring seniors and a few tiny freshmen, and winked another hinting wink at Natalie.  "Joel," she announced in an obnoxious voice as they trailed out of the room, leaving a darkly muttering Mr. Hall to erasing the board free of the words none had observed, "is the definition of bastard: mean, stupid, and probably unarguable living proof of the existence of monkey-men."

        "But we're jocks, too," Katya sighed regretfully, grabbing her twin's arm as they began to move away from Natalie, needing to enter their chemistry class, "so we have to pretend we like him for the school's p.r. department."

        "And what an actor I am!" cheered Tanya.  "Come, ho, third period awaits."  Katya smacked her arm playfully.

        They left Natalie, who laughed to no one in particular once more, charmed by the abundance of relatively fun people she seemed to meet now, and she shook her head in amusement.  Waves of glittering red framed her peach face as she walked, striding toward the far wall in order to avoid the crush of people anxiously milling through the incredibly narrow halls, until she was forced to a standstill by several boys pinning each other in the way with empty threats and moronic boasts.  "Damn," she muttered, shifting her woven bag to a more comfortable position on her shoulder and waiting for them to move.  Her foot tapped the ground with impatient calmness that belied her schooled expression of uncaring if she got to her next class.  Gradually, whether or not she wished to be, she grew aware of the voices around her, focusing innately on the stylized voices of two perky-looking sophomores wearing clothing their mothers undoubtedly were not informed they owned.

        "--lly, and I was all, get _off _me, Brian, 'cause we were in my dad's car and he would flip out of his _mind_," the stately brunette was saying loudly in her low soprano voice, clutching her books flat against her chest, "if he even thought I'd, you know, had sex with him."

        "Ooo," squealed her friend in unenviable pitch, "what happened?  Tell, tell, tell!"

        "Well," and the brunette relished every word as well as her audience's full attention, not knowing Natalie was listening, too, "he wouldn't move.  I kept telling him to get off, but, him being a guy, he wouldn't for a while, and when he grabbed my," she made a low noise somewhat like _uhimmimm_, expressing in a non-word the anatomy offended, "I smacked him.  He let go then."  She shrugged.  "No big deal."

        "Oh, wow," sighed the second girl.

        Natalie shoved her way through the boys now pacing around one another in narrowed, hesitant anger, her bag swinging from her shoulder to her elbow with the force and direction of her movement.  She ignored the cries of _hey! _and _what the hell was that?_ as she all but ran through the hall, ducking into the small alcove that led to the separated bathrooms on this side of the school.  Elbowing the door open, she danced past the startled girl preparing to exit, letting her bag plummet to the floor with little decorum or care as she thrust her arms through one of the stall doors, smashing it open with a noisy _bang!  _The stall door still open at her back, she collapsed to her knees and leaned over the toilet, purging her roiling stomach of the food suddenly unwanted there.

        "Oh, God," she whimpered to herself, tears stinging her eyes like tiny blazing daggers.  "Oh, God, oh, God," and it was her litany.  Leaning over a second time, she heaved forcefully, expelling the remnants, and she spat quietly out the undesirable bits that clung to her tongue, fingers tightened around the cold white bowl.  Natalie grasped at the toiler paper, ripping three squares off in a row and padding them together to wipe her lower face, cleaning her lips.  "Nolia," she said to the clouded bowl, clasping the handle and sending the water spiraling down in a momentary whirlpool of nauseating brown.

        She staggered to her feet and wiped her hands along the familiar wrinkles of her jacket, turning to her bag and skidding over the tiled floor to it.  Fingernails pried the opening wide enough for her to stick her hand within, pushing beyond the few notebooks and newly adopted texts to encircle the contenting, smooth rectangle that was her cell-phone.  _So we'll be connected no matter what, _Nolia had explained the month before, as they prepared for the move from Miami to Winchester as her elder sister's job demanded.  _I bought one for me, too, and all you need to do is hit the speed dial at 'one' and I'll pick up my own cell.  See?  _She clipped at the power, twitching it on as she thumbed the soft rubber digit, transparent against her patterned cell-phone cover of oranges and apples.  Holding it to her ear, she glowered at the two girls applying make-up who were currently staring at her, jaws agape.

        "Piss off," she snapped, folding her knees loosely up and wiping at the remaining wetness of a tear pressing against her eyelashes.

--

        "Miss Tartan, I need you to leave a message for this client," her boss, a somewhat prominent lawyer in the varied culture that was New York City, asked in a harried voice, handing her a manila folder that she took swiftly, placing it on the peak of her stack of paper.  "Tell him the meeting has been rescheduled to next Friday, at the same time, same location, but that I really will not be able to meet him as of Friday this week.  Will that be well?"  He studied her with his critical eyes, lined by age and stress, over the peeked glimmer of his glasses, and she smiled brightly.

        "I'm on it, Mister Johnson, sir," she chirruped and he relaxed visibly, a massive man in an equally massive leather chair that glinted in laminated dark brown under the lights above.  Hurrying out of the main office and into the smaller one separated from the secretary, as she was the assistant, she topped the papers carefully onto her clean desk, obscuring the upper half of the large paper calendar taped to the desk's gleaming surface.  "Here I go," she exhaled under her breath, sliding into her swiveling, arched chair and smoothly lifting the phone from its cradle.  The twisting cord swept idly over the calendar, brushing past the fifteenth and coming to rest on the sixteenth.  She consulted the manila folder, flipping it open and scanning the first few sheets, rustling them with her manicured fingernails and smiling in satisfaction when she found the neatly written digits.

        A pre-recorded message, via home phone of the man, greeted her and she waited patiently for the monotone, automated voice to finish its speech.  The adjoining click began her speaking.  "Hello, Mister Sebastian Arnolds, this is the office of Johnson Law Firm," she started smoothly, her voice lilting in a pleasing harmony, "and unfortunately, Mister Johnson has been forced to reschedule your appointment at the Chandelier.  The new meeting will take place at seven o'clock p.m. a week from Friday, at the same location.  Reservations have been made and all you need to do is arrive, sir."  With a cherubic smile, she punched the lever that cut off the phone, letting it drift back into the waiting slot that held it.  

        Almost simultaneously, the cell-phone adapted theme song to _Three's Company_ erupted into being and she started, blinking reflexively before she realized her cell-phone, lodged in the recesses of her desk's main drawer, had begun the tedious process of ringing.  She grabbed the silver bit of metal that was the key, inserting it into the small lock and twisting sharply, and she yanked the desk drawer out.  The contents inside shimmied for the brief moment, pencils and paper rattling alongside shallow plastic containers and boxes of paper clips and such.  Grabbing her cell-phone, she picked at the power button with her index finger and held the phone to her cheek after checking the identity of her caller: Natalie.

        "Nattie, what's wrong?" she demanded instantly, the lump of anxiety constantly present in her gut making itself loudly known as it grew.  "Are you okay?  Did something happen?  Do you want to go home?  It's only," a glance at the fashionable clock posted onto the wall, "ten in the morning!  Are you still at school?"  The questions came out rapidfire, one after another, and she could not stop even if she had wanted to, and there was a moment of stunned silence before her little sister began laughing.

        "I'm fine, Nolia, and, yes, I'm still at school," she giggled in a rasping voice, and therein followed a brief sound of gulping and deep exhaling.  "I just overheard some girls talking in the hall and it made me think of _him_, the Asshole."  Even over the phone line, she could hear the disgust and the capitalized word, not done so out of respect or fear so much as a sheer need to express how very much he was one.  "So, I'm fine, as I've already stated, but since I've got you on the phone..."  Her voice trailed off, ending in a cutely hopeful note, and Nolia was willing to bet money her younger sister was smiling sweetly and batting her eyelashes in a girlish manner.

        "What do you want and who do I have to kill for it?" Nolia sighed.

        Immediately, Natalie entered deep negotiations mode, asking in a forward manner, "Could I go to the movie theatre tonight?"

        "Who with?" was the instant response, a knee-jerk reflex to the words that could have an innocent meaning or a darker context.

        A heavy sigh, made dramatic with teenage angst and a woe-is-me attitude, ensued, and then Natalie's voice again, drawling, "U-lan Har-ris."  Nolia frowned and, as if sensing the coming doom, she hastened to plead shamelessly, "Please, please let me go, Nollie, I swear I'll be good and I won't blackmail anyone I don't know personally, and I'll be home by ten, because I was thinking we'd go by Baratie's after it, and he's like my best friend in the world, except for you, and it's a _George Clooney _film!"  Her voice took on a note of desperation.  "George Clooney, Nolia!  You can't deny me the right to see an overpaid actor with gray hair!"

        Though she could very nearly feel a tangible sense of foreboding, the type brought about by too many years spent glancing over her shoulder, Nolia muttered, "You can go."

        Natalie's happy shriek came close to deafening her.

--

**Notes: **Yes, I know it's contrived, predictable, and so forth, and yet I cannot stop.  0o;  Plot points have been given under the guise of casual conversation and serious speeches (alliteration intended), but don't worry.  There's no test…yet.  To be honest, there are actually three more relatively lengthy scenes I wanted to write in the second part of 'concrete angel,' but at nine 'story' pages, I think this is long enough.  Do note that 'concrete angel' is an expository story: it sets up the main cast for the next several stories and gives back history for each.  Trust me: it'll get better.  ;]

**Names: **Katya and Tanya Wagner are none other than Kuina and Tashigi.  O-ho!  *grins*  AH, and I forgot this the first time around (*sweatdrops*), but Nolia is Nojiko.  Insert random happy noises!

**Pop Culture References: **A name related to X-Men, and the chickflick _One Fine Day, _as well as Mister Billy Joel.  _Three's Company_: almost, but not quite, as funny as _Wings. Can't Hardly Wait, _fun movie, too.

**Disclaimer: **Just be glad I don't own 'em.  The melodrama would be horrendous.

**Feedback: **Yum!  ;]

**Written: **April 2-3, 2003.

**Revised: **April 4-5, 2003.  (Continuity error, spelling mistake, and two instances of forgetfulness.)

**Thanks: **Big Jew (I'm glad you liked it, and I'm _very _glad you liked the song thing – I was afraid people wouldn't) and Kaze no beru (oh, dear, I hope this chapter lived up to your expectations…I'm not too sure if I succeeded at writing it very well, but, eh, who knows?  *winks*).  Huggles to all!

**Next: **The scenes I wanted to put in here, with maybe another for fun.  A movie and dinner, Natalie meets The Sandman (or, rather, Nami meets Sanji), a nightmare, and a trip to NYC.  Melodrama in copious amounts?  But of course.  


	4. concrete angel: iii

_Breakfast at Baratie's_

by Memphis Lupine

(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)

--

Story One: Concrete Angel

III

--

        She spritzed a fraction of her orange-scented perfume into the air directly in front of her as she walked through the bathroom door boldly, having spent the past hour or so in self-exile within the stalled room.  Wrinkling her eyes just so to avoid the droplets clinging to her eyelashes, she let the scent stick to her and the perfume serve as a final obscuring dose, ridding herself of the undesirable stench she had gained earlier.  Students were straggling from the double gym doors a ways ahead of her, connected to the small commons area hooked also to the relatively spacious cafeteria, and she briefly considered the idea of whether or not the assembly had been important.  Shrugging, she checked her crochet bag and swung it over her shoulder, briskly walking over the stone-pattern tiles set into the commons floor toward the cafeteria.  

        She resolutely swore she would not think of _him _all day, or at all, because it _had_ been four years, after all, and she sidestepped a junior who tripped over a small rippled crack in the floor, idly grasping the handle on the door and yanking at it.  "Lunch," she sighed with an overreacting cast of her shoulders, bag thumping her spine briefly.  "Feel my yay."  Escaping the crush of students noisily pouring in, she was beginning the simplistic process of moving to the table she had seated herself at the day before when a recognized voice called out to her.

        "Natalie!" came a near-bellow from Ulan, and she stopped, turning to look over her shoulder.  He slid around two boys much larger than himself, accidentally smacking one in the face with his elbow and ducking in defense at the returning swing the boy tried to merge with his face.  "Yikes," Ulan muttered, steering around to her far side, putting as much distance between him and the fuming boy.  "How ya doing?" he grinned as friendly as possible, grabbing her upper arm in his hand and all but dragging her across the floor to the table.  

        "Brave, art thou?" Natalie commented wryly, kicking aside one of the five chairs at the table and dropping her weight into it.  Shedding her purse onto the table's sleek red surface, she raised an eyebrow at him in as sarcastic a manner as she found herself capable of while he grinned sheepishly.  "Coward," she accused teasingly, wrapping her fingers in the strings pulled taut through the mouth of her knapsack.

        "Did you even look at him?" he questioned disbelievingly, twisting his waist to point with deadly accuracy at the back of the burly young man's towhead.  "That guy's wrist is three times the width of my skull!" he continued, letting his wrist fall back to his hip and absently adjusting the strap of his thin watch.  Eyeing the line forming at the stretched lunch bar, not a server visible in sight, he cracked the knuckles of his hands, a chime of mild pops that caused her to grimace.  "I go to fight the good fight," he declared aristocratically, pulling his hair free of the hair-tie to let it coalesce in a thick froth of tightly curled ebony and then nervously binding it back into a tighter knot.  "I just wish," he sighed, "the good fight didn't involve so many people.  Tally ho and get outta the way!" 

        Natalie rolled her eyes, swerving her gaze to flipping through the pages of her notebook as he half-sprinted, half-creeped to the tail end of the line, which was admittedly rather small as the students hurried along it.  Sucking on the eraser of her pencil, biting into it with her front teeth and doing a fine job of ignoring the unique taste, she tried dredging up what little she knew on her subject.  _Gaul is France, France was overtaken by Rome, they were Celtic and didn't like the Romans, _and then her mind went completely blank.  "Peachy," she hummed in weariness, plucking the pencil from her lips and going over her name at the top of the page once more.  The bold letters grew a bit thicker, blacker, as she waited for his return.

        Finally, after what seemed like countless minutes of tallying her identity, he launched forward out of the milling crowd, dropping his tray with a semi-resounding crash and overbalancing.  He yelped, a high-pitched sound that was cut short when, his momentum carrying him too far in the direction chosen, he tilted over.  "Curse the blinding agony," she heard him grumble as he somehow twisted up into his seat, disoriented and sliding up the chair.  "I think I hit my head on something," he informed her dizzily, and he shook his head, loose curls bouncing around his brown face.  He glanced at her notebook and turned to the side, picking at what she assumed was his backpack and lifting a binder with a clear sheathed outside to plop on the table.  "Check it out," he said with immense pride, twirling it around for her benefit.  "There be dragons!"

        She tilted her head to one side, judging the detailed and intricate design of a crawling dragon penciled onto a sheet of computer paper fitted into the front sheath.  A few traces of color lit some of the tiny scales, faint glints of pale red highlighted with spots of blue, and she grinned.  "Either you're a remarkably gifted speed-artist, or you have absolutely no life whatsoever at all.  From what little I know of you, I'm willing to bet it's the latter of the two."

        He raised his nose into the air, sniffing in wounded distaste and flipping his binder back to his angle.  "Meddle not in the affairs of dragons," he said with a condescending tone, "for you are crunchy and tasty with ketchup."  Before she had time to do much other than blanch and question his sanity, he snatched up a large plastic container filled with vegetable sticks and tossed it at her.  She caught it and he lifted his fork, stabbing several pieces of light green lettuce in his overwhelming salad and shoveling it into his mouth.  He popped his container of chocolate milk open as she shrugged and twisted apart the covering of the clear rectangle box.  "So, I see you weren't at the assembly.  I'll assume you know what you plan to be in life, and therefore don't need to hear those pretentious anal-retentive counselors yak for over an hour."

        "No clue what I'm going to be," she said happily, sticking a chopped bit of radish in her mouth and chewing reflectively, quickly, then swallowed the small bit of food.

        "You don't know what you're going to be?" he asked as if he could not believe what she had said, chewing the forkful of salad in his mouth with soft crunches.  "Tell me you're kidding.  Everyone," and he gestured lazily around them at the impressive maturity of the student body, currently embroiled in a cheering match over some unseen fight, "knows what they want to do."  Decisively, he stuffed another set of tossed semi-fresh vegetables in his mouth and granted her an elaborate gagging scene before he swallowed and accepted her sardonic applause with a pleasant nod.

        Chewing at the end of a carrot pried from the small plastic tub of assorted veggie sticks she had been presented with from his neon tray, Natalie tugged the lapels of her black jacket around her thin purple tube-top and reflected on his words.  "Well, if you're so sure about yourself," she nibbled daintily and stuck it into her inner cheek, "then what, exactly, are you planning on doing?"  She selected a celery stick and bit into it sharply, grimacing at her failure to whip out the threads lining its green crispness.

        "Artist," informed Ulan succinctly, stabbing an awkwardly sliced radish and popping it into his mouth, working his jaw.

        She grinned, having expected that answer based on her admittedly short acquaintance with him, and asked dryly, "Starving or non-starving?"  A quick succession of _zings _noted her skinning the celery of its tiny veins, and she smiled in smug self-appreciation.

        "And that is why I'll have a more prosperous career that uses my artistic skills _and pays well," he announced cheerily, using the side of his fork to scrap together a large portion of his non-lethal salad.  "I've already gotten a hefty scholarship for Luberston Tech in N-Y-C, and I'll be an official architect in," he glanced at his watch comically, "five years, if not less."  He piled together the few scraps of lettuce clinging tenaciously to the Styrofoam bowl and somehow managed to scoop the entirety of the salad left into his mouth.  "And if that fails," he added cheekily around his very full mouth, "I can always fall back on my naturally rakish good looks for acting.  Haven't you even considered it yet?"_

        "I've never thought about it, actually," she admitted in a light voice, pointedly ignoring his self-deprecating humor and the tingling memory of why she had avoided the prospect of college.  _You bitch, _she let the memory roll for a few seconds and she bit her tongue angrily, choked back old hate.  _Now is not the time, _she instructed herself firmly.  Ulan was grinning slyly at her and she felt a chain of suspicious laughter in her throat, wary of why, exactly, he was looking at her so.

        "I know precisely what you happen to be suited for, Nat," he began in a purposefully infomercial voice, the sunlight outside grazing the trees and the abundant black curls twisted into a small bob at the dip in his neck where head flowed into throat.  Natalie eyed him cautiously, slowly chewing the celery in her mouth and swallowing it as her face betrayed her distrust.  "Blazing lights, pandemonium of the most glorious kind, singing!"  He tossed one hand to the side dramatically, that sneakily innocent grin still on his face.  "Dancing!"  The other hand mirrored its partner's flashy motion.  "Natalie Tartan, Vegas showgirl!"

        She was hardly appreciative.  "Ulan," she started sweetly, pointing idly to the fork whose tines he was strumming his fingernails over, "care to find out how far down your throat I can shove that fork as opposed to how quickly through it?"

        He paused his miniaturized guitar antics, considering her threat, and thought it wise to offer an addendum.  "Perhaps the career could be changed," he suggested and she nodded acceptance.  "But seriously, all you really need to do is focus on your strengths and figure out what all they could be used for."

        She nibbled thoughtfully on a particularly thin carrot stick.  "I like math of any sort," she mused out loud, "especially calculus and trig.  Marketing and accounting classes have always been fun, too."

        "Accountant," he said immediately, sipping at the folded carton shaded into a darkness indicating he was indeed drinking chocolate milk.  "Or an economist, or something having to do with money and earning it."  Her answering look was of the _no, duh _variety, and he ignored her with stately grace.  He enjoyed the flavor of the beverage for the briefest moment, keeping it on his tongue, and then swallowed, flashing his toothy smile at her and stretching his legs out, jogging pants crinkling noisily.  "That or the world's scariest math teacher."  He shrugged helplessly and she bared her incisors, presenting him her most evilly comedic look of pure horror film knowledge, and he threw his arms up over his eyes with a mock-howl.

        "Oh, God!" he cried in terror.  "My blood!"

        "My ears!" she added, making a show of rubbing them as he subsided sheepishly. 

--

        Natalie pulled free the large glass covering for the wide pan, wrinkling her nose at the familiar milky scent of stroganoff and grasping a large spatula to stir it carefully one last time.  Yellow noodles and lumps of broken beef broke the creamy stickiness bonding it all together, and she tore apart the thinnest layer of clotted film lying over it all.  Stirring it into a presentable, cleanlier form, she tapped the spatula on the sturdy edge of the pan and tossed it a foot to her left, the black plastic clattering in the metal sink.  She lifted the pan, forgetting to stuff her hands into the oven mitts she had pulled out upon returning to their new home, and rolled her lower lip into her mouth.  Biting, she shuffled hastily over the floor to the wide bar separating kitchen from dining room and slipped it onto the grill raised over the laminated wood.  "Ow, ow, ow," she grumbled to herself, popping her fingertips into her mouth and suckling to nurse the reddening tender spots. 

        It did fit in with her day for her to accidentally burn herself when making a dinner to be refrigerated for her elder sister's sake, an apology for taking such an early night out so soon after the move.  She knew it was silly, as she gingerly removed her fingers from her mouth and shook them mildly, blowing a cool burst of air from her lungs to the wettened tips.  After all, they had developed individual lives in Florida, and she had done the usual teenaged things there just as she would to the best of her ability here.  _But she doesn't have anyone else here, yet, _and she groaned.  

        Dropping her fingers to the faded blue of her tight jeans, rubbing the sensitized tips over the pebbly fabric, she looked resolutely into the mirror set over the glint of the sink.  She saw a small girl verging into womanhood with large brown eyes set in a face colored like the soft pink surface of a peach, and fiery hair cut into a hairstyle that had always reminded her of Scully from the earlier seasons.  Her mood lifted with that thought, a sense of personal levity, and she laughed, trying to imagine herself in a formal government outfit and finding it humorous.  "All I need is Mulder," she murmured lightly, fiddling through one of the drawers for a box of band-aids and the long, slender box of plastic wrap.  

        Finding the latter first, she struggled momentarily with the static-attracted plastic as it fought to cling to her knuckles, and pulled an admirable length from the box's perfectly cut opening.  A few inches twisted in her hands, bunching against her will into silver clumps that curved in on each other, and she finally tore it free.  Dumping the box back into the drawer and knocking it shut with her hip, she crooked her hand to avoid the wrap sticking to her sleeve.  

        "You shall not defeat me," she informed the plastic and tucked it tightly over the top of the still warm pan, effectively sealing the heated contents for layaway.  "And now the tricky part," she continued in a low voice, tender fingers wrapping around the edge of the pan with a firm if loose grip.  Skittering back to the refrigerator deposited by the wall and near the stove, she shifted it between her hand and her waist, ignoring the radiating heat.  She used her free hand to pick the refrigerator door open and she engineered the large pan onto an empty shelf in the relatively scant interior.  

        "This deed is done," Natalie announced to the circulating air in the lower level of the townhouse, gesturing with a grand twirl of her hand to the sleek white machine.  "But I must seek band-aids now," she added, turning on her socked heel and dashing past her discarded ankle boots to the carpeted stairs.  Pounding up, she ran her healthy fingers through her hair, plying free the few tiny knots developing and checking the styled fall of red locks.  The bathroom door hung open in invitation and she, not being a fool, promptly ducked in, jerking the narrow towel closet open and flicking her eyes from top to bottom. 

        An inconspicuous white box, small and plain, caught her attention and she grabbed it, digging the folded top open.  Three miniature bandages, tucked safely within their flat wrappers, were dug free of the box and she shoved the top back into place, tossing it in the closet and shutting the door with a hurried push.  "Come on, come on," she chanted, peeling the first wrapper and flicking off the smooth plastic wings underlying the bandage's arms.  It took some coordination to cup her first fingertip with the band-aid using only one hand and her elbow, but she did it and gloated for her own benefit.  

        Another minute was wasted getting the other two fingers bandaged and she glanced impatiently at the wall before she remembered there was no clock unpacked yet.  "Knowing the way my day's been headed, I'll probably end up late," she sighed, and she hesitated before the sleek mirror.  Studying her appearance a second time, she held her arms slightly away from her body, staring at the curved body clad in a form-fitting top that exposed the upper, hinting curve of cleavage.  "Jacket," she agreed with her previous addition to her attire.  "If only to avoid that scene again."

        Out the door she sprinted, clomping down the stairs in her cotton-covered feet and swinging around the knob at the end of the stairs.  She stooped by her ankle boots, forcing the mouth of each open wider and wriggling her feet into their corresponding sheaths.  Quickly knotting the laces at the swell of her ankle, startling white threads in smudged black leather, she straightened and cast her eyes about for the limp swath of her abandoned jacket.  It was waiting for her by the door and she picked her way over the tiles to it, lifting it and rubbing the sturdy feel of it between her fingers.  She paused before she slipped it on, glancing straight down her own shirt and grimacing.  

        Three minutes later, she left the front door of their diminutive townhouse, a scarlet dress Nolia had frequently complained was too small having been exchanged for her previous outfit, as common sense declared if it did not fit Nolia, then it ought to fit her.  A slender high collar to it brushed the mid-point of her neck, and the thin weave belt was firmly encircling her waist tightly.  Her jacket was still claimed, hanging smoothly over her crooked arm, and she tapped her dressy sandals on the cement platform connected to the sidewalks by a set of three steps.  Fumbling with her key, she injected it into the matching slot and twisted stiffly, testing the knob and smiling when it refused to turn.  The door thusly locked, she patted her key into the zipped pocket of her jacket and swirled the leather over her clothed arms.  The gauzy hem of the loose sleeves peeked shyly through the black openings, tickling her palms at the soft contact.  

        As she strolled at a more or less quick pace, she looked about her, at the rows of simple townhouses lining one of the several intersecting roads that connected the one residential area to the large square that was social life.  It struck her as vastly different from the places she had lived in for the past four years, large cities one could easily avoid being found or recognized.  This place called Winchester was small and easy to ignore on a map as the tiniest dot visible, the name an abbreviated Wnctr written in subscript wrapped around the circle.  While walking, she started to smile, a secretive twitch of her lips moving up into a full-blown laughing grin.  

        She turned a corner, tugging the zipper open and pulling free a crumpled sheet of paper, keeping the key still within the smooth pouch.  Groups of teenagers were along this street, laughing and yelling and hugging, some walking toward the distant goal of the theatre, others simply having fun on one another's doorstops.  Unfolding the paper, smoothing the wrinkles by placing one hand at its back and running the side of her other down it, she studied the detailed sketch Ulan had drawn for her at lunch once she knew he was capable of drawing.  It was a map, with streaks of colored pencil showing her the different paths to take to landmarks, with scrawled titles dotting certain buildings: her house, as described to him, his house, the theatre, Baratie's, the two grocery stores, and so forth.  

        Hurried footsteps sounded behind her, quick ones verging on a jog, and she stepped to the side, pressing to the bricks of one of the townhouses around her.  A thin man with blonde hair swept past her, adjusting the buttoned collar of a semi-professional blue shirt and responding with a wave to the welcoming cries of several teens along the path.  Rolling her eyes and returning to the sidewalk, abandoning the crushed grass where she had stood, she looked at the faded street sign at the end of the street, and turned another corner.  

        The house addresses of the maintained townhouses, built and separated together, were written in the standard curved numbers painted dull gold in accordance with one of the Rules of Life.  She held the paper up, the lapels of it threatening to curve away from her, and memorized with the movements of her lips the numbers of his house.  "Four-oh-two-two-three," she murmured, glancing up at the buildings and scanning both sides, a twinge of frustration growing when she could not find it.  Turning slightly, she started, seeing the building parallel to her stance sporting the desired address.  "Oh, great, thanks," she offered to the sky, stuffing the paper back into her jacket and pulling the zipper shut, after checking to ensure the key was still within it.  

        Crossing the cracked black pavement of the street, she checked to see if her jacket was buttoned, leaning forward to the door.  She grasped the knocker, a carved swirl with a decorative cornucopia in the center, and knocked it politely on the red painted wood.  Waiting in the slightly nippy March air, she exhaled and shifted her weight, looking to the clouds above and the faint line of a commercial plane soaring too high to be heard.  She lowered her head and, leaning curiously to the side to check the window, glass obscured by lacy white curtains, shrugged, grabbing the knocker and heaving it a little harder.  

        "Coming!" a by-now-familiar bellow came from somewhere in the confines of the white townhouse.  She stepped down to the first step, viewing the ledges beneath windows painted a red stark against the ivory boards that formed it.  "I'm com--ah, geez!"  Faint mutterings emanated from near the door, and she heard the locks being turned.  The door swung open, revealing a harried Ulan, streaks of something resembling dark chocolate decorated the side of his face closest to a giggling toddler he was holding.  "Greetings, Nat!" he said dryly, and the toddler teetered in his arms, patting the chocolate on his face and scooping some into his chubby hand.  Sticking the hand into his tiny mouth, the toddler shared a brilliant, adorable smile with Natalie and she studied him with an arched eyebrow.  "Yes, Onion," Ulan said with a sigh.  "Yum: nutella."

        He motioned for her to step into the hall, the yellow overhead light in the entrance struggling to beam properly, and she observed what little she could see of the inside of the Harris homestead.  The right half, such as what was seen, was spotless, perfectly cleaned and all but sparkling with its lack of dirt, while its opposite was scattered with toys, an empty pizza box, and several sketches.  An artist easel was erected in the corner of the small drawing room, and she grinned at her own double entrende. 

        "Sorry for the mess," a woman's voice called from what she assumed was the kitchen connected to the living room on her right.  "Ulan's been helping me watch his cousins, and they tend to be rather rowdy."

        Ulan beamed and winced as the toddler held in his arms tugged painfully at the loosening curls of his hair.  "Ow, okay, let's not, ow," he fumbled with the tight grip to free his wounded follicles.  "Onion, stop," he sternly ordered, and the boy let go, lower lip trembling sneakily. "Crying won't help, kiddo," and he set the boy on the floor.  Immediately, the child stumbled to his feet and ran, wobbling, down the hall stretching to the staircase daggering into the second floor.  Two yelling voices could be heard on the upper landing, and the third child clambered up the stairs.

        "Onion?" Natalie asked.  "I'll bet it's a nickname."

        "I call him Onion 'cause he makes me cry," Ulan replied, waving for her to wait a minute as he dodged into the room leading to the kitchen.  "His real name's Orion," he called, voice muffled by walls and meager distance.  "Perro and Canaan are his brothers, but I call _them _Pepper and Carrot.  Such is my sense of humor."  There was a moment of silence broken by the sound of running water and something like a slap to his shoulder, complete with a soft _ow_.

        Natalie loved it.  Inhaling deeply, she felt oddly cozy in the entrance, staring with fascination at the coats discarded carelessly near the door, muddied boots lopsidedly grouped together.  This was what she wanted more than anything for herself, for Nolia, the enveloping chaos of a shifting family and the messy state of existence that came with it.  Even the air smelled different, tugging scents of cinnamon hooked with the crisp essence of apple, and she shivered happily, arms looping around her abdomen nonchalantly.  "Coming soon, Ulan?" she questioned loudly.

        "Almost done cleaning my face!" came the answer, and then a lower, "See ya later, Mom."  He came back around the corner, large portraits lining the walls of the narrow hall catching her attention as she studied the painting mingled with photographs, and she tore her gaze from it.  His fingers plied the hair-tie free, letting his tangled curls fall to his shoulders and slipping the tie around his wrist as he would a bracelet. The checkered bandana dwelling on a small square table in the entrance, next to the door, was picked up, and he tied it with a practiced flick of his hands over his bangs.

        "Can we go now?" she asked plaintively, giving him her saddest expression, and she grasped the doorknob, twirling the door open and gesturing broadly.  "Why the bandana?" requested Natalie as they stepped back into the setting sun of Winchester.  

        "Why do you think, foo'?" he answered congenially.  "A thug's gotta have his threads, y'hear?"  Ulan glanced at his watch and swore, causing her to blink and wonder if he had been bitten by something.  "We're going to miss it if we don't hurry!" he yelped, snatching her elbow in his hand and running along the street.  "Must!  Run!  Faster!"

        "It won't kill us to be late, you know!" she yelled right back, grumbling at the unwanted feel of a rock getting caught in her sandals and scouring her heel.  "And besides, I didn't get to meet your family or anything.  Well, other than your cousin, but that's beside the point."  She ducked the whipping branch of a tree sticking prominently outside the boundaries of someone's cluttered yard, swearing under her breath and yanking her arm free of his hand.  Running still, she hopped briefly on one foot, digging the rock out of her sandal and plopping her foot back to the ground.

        "It's only my mom and me, anyway," he said dismissively, turning sharply around a corner where the scarred pavement gave way to dusty cobblestones.  "Cross the street," he called over his shoulder.  "The theatre's right here."  It was a wide building, of an old construction style with framed light and a jutting angle of white billing that featured the title of the evening's chosen movie in bold black letters.  

        "Well, then, come on," she said cheerfully, breaking into a sprint and beating him to the ticket booth pinned betwixt the two wide entrances.  "Two for the movie," she informed the teller breathlessly, and the elderly man nodded, smiling widely at them both.  "How much is it going to cost?" she turned to Ulan.

        "Five-fifty, I think," he nodded decisively, and she dug into the second pocket of her jacket, peeling free a five and a one.  

        She shrugged and handed both bills over in exchange for the twin gold tickets the man offered through the slit in the plastic paneling.  "Here, take-ith it and come-ith in."  She stabbed one of the tickets into her companion's face, and he jerked back reflexively, taking it from her at the same time.  

        They snuck through the entrance, and he pointed silently down to one of the two theatres, his face a mask of solemnity and comedic seriousness.  "Movie," she sang in reply and he stuck his tongue out with a wide grin.

--

        "You're late," Jonathon greeted him with his usual scowl, the dark-haired chef busying himself with the preparation for the usual influx of teens at night.  While weeknights never had anywhere near the amount of teens as the weekends did, business was still due for a more frenetic pace as soon as the sun dipped beneath the horizon.  

        "My car wouldn't start," he said pleasantly, offering his middle finger in apology, and the other man snorted rudely.  "What?  I couldn't make it in time," and he plucked one of the hefty white aprons from the sterilized hooks lining the door that opened into the kitchen.  Currently standing in the wide backroom reserved for delivering food from kitchen to dining, the two men shared a thick feeling of hostility.

        "Car?" snorted the shorter of the two, quickly picking free the knot keeping his apron in place.  The stained cloth was deposited without decorum into a deep, rolling hamper, collapsing limply amongst the other bits of laundry to be cleaned by the last shift.  "You don't _need_ a shittin' car.  You walk outside, take two minutes to walk, and, wow, you're at work.  It's the same for every moron who works here."  He wrinkled his nose in arrogant distaste when the late arrival absently pulled a lighter from his jeans' pocket and flipped it open to reveal the flickering flame, singeing the end of the cigarette he had stuck into his mouth when Jonathon shed his apron.

        "Kiss my ass," he responded politely, inhaling one breath of the smoke and kicking the swinging door to the kitchen open.  Vanishing into the heated room of boilers, stoves, and sleek metal countertops, he left the now off-duty man to his embroiled seething.  "Evening," he greeted the others, and a few grunts came in reply as he briskly moved to his standard position.  

        "Ten minutes," a gruff voice said to his left and he showed no visible reaction other than shifting the cigarette so it hung from the corner of his mouth instead of closer to the front.  He, mimicking the motions of the others, scraped clean the cooking surface of the grill and spread the faint layer of butter needed on it, lathering it into a sticky bubbling.  "You'll be working the open bar tonight," the voice continued and he spared a glance over his shoulder as he moved in an angle to one of the deep sinks scattered about the place.    

        Washing his hands quickly, soaping the skin and letting the faucet pound it away with a harsh stream of near-scalding water, he blew out a slight puff of shaded smoke.  "Point, old man?" he asked callously, rolling his blue sleeves past his elbow and yanking lightly until they could scale up no further.  He chewed momentarily on the end of the white cylinder clamped in his jaw, an old habit, and accepted the metal bin of shrimp from the eternally grumpy veteran.  "I'm here, I'm cooking, and nobody died.  As an added bonus, I pissed Jonathon off three minutes earlier than usual."  He grinned to himself, a nasty curve of his lips that more than exposed his dislike for the other man.  "I've had a remarkably pleasant day so far."

        "I'm sure," Sef snorted uncaringly, readjusting his balance on the crutch that assisted his walking.  The loose fabric of his trousers obscured the solid white plastic of his false leg, an addition to his person from just below his knee straight down into an unmoving false foot tied strongly into the brown leather of his shoe.  "Don't let any ash get into the food, or I'll have you out on your ass before you have time enough to choke on the ash-ridden food I'll shove down your throat."

        "That's shit and you know it," replied the lanky cook in a foggy voice, more preoccupied with his job at the moment.  A warning sizzle came from the grill, as it had been from the surrounding grills, and he flipped the bits of food over with practiced movements, leaning forward slightly as one of the many assistants bustled past.  "Oh, and Mommy?" he asked cutely, turning slightly to flutter his eyelashes precociously at the unappreciative senior cook.  "Is it okie if I talk to the girlies?"

        "Like you wouldn't if he said no," the compact man to his right said disparagingly, arranging food on a plate lining the bar ledged over the grills and traveling to the door.  "It's never stopped you before."  He shoved the edge of the plate, sending it careening in a controlled path down the rolling bar to a waiting assistant.

        "You're just jealous, dumbass," he retorted, moving briefly to the side and tapping a trickling stream of pale grey ash into the small trashcan placed there.  Contented, he cast a critical eye to the shrimp gathered before him and nodded to no one in particular, motioning for one of the other cooks to toss him a plate.  "And while my search for The One has yet to yield any satisfactory results," he persisted to the various rolling of eyes and obscene expressions, as Sef wielded his crutch and crossed the floor to yell at a clumsy assistant trying desperately to clean up a spilled container of cooking oil, "it doesn't mean I can't keep searching."

        "You're not looking for The One," someone yelled rudely.  "You're just looking for a lay!"

        "Damn straight!" he agreed cheerily, tasting his cigarette's bitter tang and pushing the completed plate down the trail.  "But, what the shit, if I happen to find The One during, it just makes it all the better."  He ripped one of the tags of orders from the board they were posted on before him, crumpling it into a ball in his hand and dropping it into the slick black trashcan.  A rag was utilized to clean the grill quickly, gathering up the streaks of butter and other unwanted waste products into the cloth, and he set it on the counter below the bar.  "So get the hell off my back and let me be a normal man."

        The man to his right muttered something pointedly crude and proceeded to grill a large steak.

--

        "It _is _possible," Natalie insisted as they shuffled out of the darkened room housing one of the two screens, hands clenched in her jacket's pockets.  The theatre was horribly cold and she was beginning to doubt Ulan being human, as the air conditioning had yet to affect him.  They stopped walking in the lobby, taking in the warmer air circulating there, and paused before the snack bar lit by fluorescence glowing brightly.  "Look, it just is, okay?" she repeated in frustration at his continued look of disbelief.

        "No," he replied, unmoving, and she threw her arms to the side, turning to walk out the double glass doors.  "It's not possible, Natalie, and I don't know what crap you're reading," he sidestepped the swinging door she purposefully attempted to smack him with, "but it's lying."  He shivered in the burst of dying winter chill, and she felt relief at it, both thinking over their argument.

        "I'll prove it one day," she stated loftily as they crossed the cobblestone street with the other teenagers making the migration to the shimmering windows of Baratie's.  "I'll find someone who can bend their arms twice around their body, and then, oh then, I'm going to laugh," she drawled the word out into a mocking sound.

        "Good luck finding a contortionist," retorted Ulan, skipping ahead of her under the glimmering streetlights to haul the door open.  "Hurry, before the heathen masses trample me," he added, planting his hand squarely between her shoulder blades and shoving her through the door.  True to his word, a large group of loudly chattering teenagers followed, a few squeezing past him before he managed to nearly hurl himself forward, leaving the door to another hapless boy.  Hopping on his toes and glancing around, he quickly spotted a laughing redhead on the opposite side of the flow of high school students into the erstwhile empty restaurant.  He sighed and judged the depth of the crowd pouring in, shrugging and waving with a broad grin for her to come across.  

        "What?" she demanded, popping her hands onto her waist and giving him a rather quelling glare.  "I'm waiting for _you_!" she stressed, rocking back on her heels.  He gave her an innocent expression suggesting he could not hear her, and she snorted skeptically, wading forth into the swiftly scattering teens as the door creaked dangerously under the strain.  Elbowing a few of the more impatient teenagers directly in their ribs, causing hasty retreats on the part of most as they were unable to find their aggressor, she slid over the sticky navy leather of the barstool next to his.  "Now I'm mad at you," she informed him, zipping her pockets and feeling it briefly.  Her key was still safely locked within.  "Why are we at the bar?"  She glanced over the display of wine and beer stuck in the aged rack kept behind the bar a ways, and then spared a quick look at the television set in the corner blaring a college football game at them.

        "Silly Miss Tartan," he shook his head with a chortle, "why else would we be at the bar?"

        "Cigarettes, booze, and free crackers?" she suggested, picking one of the plastic-wrapped sets from a woven basket for proof of her claim.

        "I only get free crackers, unfortunately," he sighed, taking it from her hand and leaning to the side when she swung half-heartedly at him with the back of her hand.    
        "What for?" she questioned around a mouthful of cracker, scraping her fingernail thoughtfully over the rippled end of the plastic she had not torn.  The second cracker rested inside the wrinkled wrapper, snapped into crooked halves, and she absently filched one of the halves out, sticking it into her mouth.

        He swallowed both of his crackers, crumpling his own wrapper and tossing it expertly over the counter into a shadowed trashcan under the alcohol rack, the makeshift ball not even brushing the dark bag lining it.   While she clapped in approval, he bowed his head seriously, and then confessed, "I'm only seventeen.  I have to wait until next Tuesday to be legally old enough for smoking, and booze is the Devil's drink."  He sketched a quick Catholic cross between shoulders and forehead, as if to ward away the mentioned evil.

        "True words of a recovering alcoholic," she stated wisely, sagely nodding her head in slow knowing.  Balling up her wrapper, she tossed it, one arm stretching under the other in playful athleticism, and she groaned when she missed horribly.  Beside her, Ulan was making choked sounds suspiciously akin to muffled laughter when one has masticated food on the tongue.  She scowled a dirty glare at him and he gave her an appeasing twist of his hands, palms lifted up.  "Anyway, I'm only interested in the free crackers," and she ripped open another package savagely, breaking the first in half and nibbling hungrily at it.  The glitter of a barely-touched water bottle she had brought with her from the theatre sparkled temptingly and she poked the other half into her cheek, daintily chewing as she twirled the cap off.  "Feel like Spanish tapwater marketed as that of Colorado mountain springs?" she asked, taking a swig and washing it in her mouth to rid her teeth of the clinging crumbs.

        "Never," he gasped in shocked horror, and he filched her second cracker.  Ignoring her deadly look, he shoveled it between his lips and chewed with agonizing slowness.  When she pretended to wipe away his existence from her mind, he poked her shoulder strongly and she twisted around.  Immediately, he stuck his tongue out, the remnants of the cracker displayed to her blatant disgust. 

        "Ew, gross, gross, gross!" she all but yelled, grabbing the collar of her jacket and pulling up, creating a temporary shielding hood.  "You are _dis-gus-ting_," she was careful to make sure he knew, wriggling her jacket back into place after a precautionary moment.  As soon as she glanced back at him, he stuck his tongue out again and she made an obnoxious gagging sound.

        Swallowing the cracker, he nearly fell off his chair laughing at her, and she lifted her hand to place it near her eyes, cutting him from her vision.  "I can't believe I'm being seen in public with you," she muttered.

        "We're in Winchester, the small town," he thought it worth mentioning.  "It's not public: it's where more than three people can see you."

        Natalie flicked a relatively hefty crumb at him, her polished fingernail pointing a warning at his wrist, and he faked a graphic wound, clutching his wrist and making pitiful sounds deep in his throat.  "It hurts so," he sobbed, letting his forehead smack the counter, and his shoulders shook in contrast with his gasping sounds of eloquent anguish.

        "Loser," she answered sweetly, peering into the wrapped yellow of the packed crackers and sighing.  Pushing it delicately to the side, fingers brushing it with elegance and grace written in her every slender muscle as her hand touched it, she studied the wall before them with muted interest.  "Nice display," she commented to herself, and a rough voice laughing behind their curved backs snagged her attention effectively.  Listening to it carefully, she heard a feminine voice tinged with a gentle weariness, and she grinned.

        "Oh, Ulan," she sang and he lifted his head from where he had apparently begun to doze, blinking at her.  "I wonder who just walked through the door."

        Obligingly, with an exasperated toss of his shoulders, he twisted around on the stool, froze while his eyes widened, and twirled back to face the bar with an extremely nervous expression.  His face was tilted slightly to the shined bar, fingers tensing on the edge, and he glowered at her through the corners of his eyes.  "That isn't fair, Nat," he groaned.  "And I swear I'm going to tear my own throat out before I ever tell anyone about her again."

        "I dunno," Natalie shrugged teasingly.  "I thought you'd like that Hawaiian muumuu on her.  And that bikini top is just so darn cute, isn't it, Ulan?"  She grinned in a most definitely feline swell of her lips, the gleam of straight teeth just barely hinted at in the slight opening.  "Shall I call her over?"

        "Kill me now," he moaned pathetically, dropping his head onto his crossed arms, staring piteously at her when he tilted his face so his cheek rested on his forearm.  "Take that basket," his eyes flickered to the basket she had moved, "place it to my temple, and apply swift, bruising power to it.  Crush my skull.  Take me away from this awful existence plagued with Joel and a friend who can do nothing but torment me.  Oh, sweet Chamomile, I doth not deserve thee."  He sighed, a look of comical self-pity adorning his swarthy face and a slight pout to his lower lip as he gazed longingly at the basket.

        "Death does not become you," she pointed out, casually picking another thing of crackers and popping it open. Grabbing one of the crackers, she shoved its salted goodness into his face, her arm straightened out fully and elbow locked determinedly.  "Take of this sustenance and live once more," Natalie smiled in as divine a style as she could while wielding her bottle of water like she might a live stick of dynamite.

        Before Ulan could do little more than meekly accept her offering of cracker and water bottle for fear of her making good her threat of beckoning his personal goddess over, two long hands slammed crankily on the counter.  One landing on each side of his head, he stared blankly at the pale hands decorated with a large class ring and a signet of unknown source, then rolled his eyes up to see better.  Natalie was choking on her laughter, caused more by his startled look than anything else, and he sat up with a hint of irritated chagrin aimed not at her but the man currently glaring slightly evil daggers at him.

        "What the hell are you doing smudging my counter?" the man asked pleasantly, his jaw tensed visibly behind his thin lips over the end of his drooping cigarette.  "Do you have any idea how long it takes to clean it?  And then you go and lie on it like some dog?"  He straightened his back and extended his body to his admittedly formidable height, pinching the cigarette's body in two knuckles and pulling it free to exhale the smoke as a dragon would.  

        "You look as idiotic as always, Sandman," greeted the senior with a friendly scowl.  "Is that curl in your eyebrow natural or do you need special attention for it?"

        "Do birds nest on your nose or is it just for decoration?" Sandman snapped right back, jabbing the cigarette back into place, the odd scent of pale apples following the wrinkling ivory cylinder.  Ulan touched his nose self-consciously and grimaced, knowing the shot was fair in lieu of his own, but not appreciating it anyway.

        "I laugh when I don't mean to," Natalie explained unashamedly when he looked at her, and he made a quick face, jerking his head slightly toward the lanky man behind the bar while doing so.  Still smiling broadly, she shook her head and looked up a bit at their unintended server.  "Do you have any menus?" she asked brightly, ignoring Ulan's dark mutterings and promises for revenge at some point in the far distant future.  A moment of very sudden silence befell her, and she shrunk back a little, playing her fingers together as she studied his funny expression.  It struck her perhaps she had broken some unspoken small town rule, such as she might find out as of now, and she briefly wondered if he had stopped breathing.

        "Yes!" he finally answered, snapping his head as if tearing himself from an unexpected lapse in brain activity, and he flashed an utterly charming smile at her.  "If you hold on just a minute, pretty lady," she steadfastly ignored the poorly disguised snort of _yeah, and the Earth's flat_ from her left, "I'll have you one."  With that, the tall man, dressed in a shirt of buttoned blue with rolled sleeves tucked inside black jeans, swirled on his heel and moved toward the back.  A flash of an i.d. card from Joel, who had set himself up with Chamomile on the far end of the bar, distracted him momentarily, and he moved to check the doctored square of laminated white.

        "Who was that?" questioned Natalie with a raised eyebrow of sculpted sunlight.

        "Sandman," Ulan responded airily.  "He's something of a rampant womanizer and since he hasn't had the chance to hit on the relative loveliness that is you," he granted her a soft grunt when she lightly socked his shoulder, "he won't let you a moment of peace all night."

        "So, what," she started cheekily, "it'll be like spending my time with you, only with a smoking blonde who cooks?"

        His was not a kind facial response.  "He's twenty-two, at least, and we all know him," he waved around generally at the loud cacophony of teenage interaction.  "And if he has his way, you'll know him as well."  This was said in an enigmatic tone offset by the extreme waggling of his thin eyebrows, and she shoved him unceremoniously from his perch on the stool.  His replying yelp struck her as rather satisfying and she sipped cherubically at her water bottle, taking small amounts of the falsely advertised clearness into her mouth and smiling to the bar alone.

--

**Notes: **It's a bit longer than I meant for it to be, and I didn't cover at least two of the scenes I wanted to.  Alas, alas, but such it is.  I know this is going rather slow, but the chapters (or, rather, bits of the stories) will be getting gradually larger.  Just stick around a little, enjoy the lazy pace for the next few stories before summer hits and everything hits pandemonium level (more or less).  Two very vague references were in this chapter to two other characters that won't be introduced for some time yet, and I'm only telling you because I'm evil like that.  ;]  My apologies for the rising level of profanity, but it _is _more or less in character for Sanji, at least.  

**Names: **Orion, Perro, and Canaan are none other than, respectively, Tamanegi, Piman, and Ninjin.  (Or, in their translated names, Onion, Pepper, and Carrot.)  I didn't say the new name of Usopp's mum…but it's Bethany.

**Pop Culture References: **The Sandman again (let's just say that'll be there for every chapter and leave it at that), a particularly fun bumper-sticker about dragons and why not to mess in their affairs, _The X-Files_, that yummy chocolate-y spread Nutella, and the mysticism of college football.  Go Dawgs!

**Disclaimer: **I'm a fifteen-year old girl of arguable talent, not a genius named Oda Eiichiro.  

**Feedback: **I'll be your best friend!  (Although, seriously, I don't have the advanced author thing, so I pretty much can only go by my reviews as to whether or not anyone is reading.  A simple word or two would suffice: 'good' or 'you suck,' for example.  *winks*)

**Written: **April 6-7, 2003.

**Revised: **April 10, 2003.  (Really silly grammar mistakes.  I am both chagrined and amused.  Somehow.)

**Thanks: **To my one reviewer for chapter two.  *^.&*  Many thanks, Bialy, and here's to hoping I characterize Sanji decently next chapter.  0o;  And that the plot starts working a little more agreeably with me.

**Next: **Ulan and Natalie talk in Baratie's, Natalie has a peculiar conversation with Sandman, and the nightmare occurs once more.  A trip to NYC is planned.  (If the chapter doesn't grow out of my control like this one did.)


	5. concrete angel: iv

_Breakfast at Baratie's_

by Memphis Lupine

(memphis_lupine@hotmail.com)

--

Story One: Concrete Angel

IV

--

        "Chamomile," the recognizable voice of The Sandman said in a low hiss, and she looked up from sipping at her vanilla milkshake to see him fidgeting with his scented cigarette.  Swallowing and conscious of Joel's heavy arm wrapped tightly around her waist, she smiled in quick acknowledgement, and he pointed down the bar.  "You know every person at the high school, right?" he asked, pinching his cigarette in his fingers and pulling it free of his lips to breathe out a thin column of apple-laced smoke.  She nodded a second time, in slightly confused answer, and he fitted the cigarette back into his lips, taking it between his teeth and biting lightly down with incisors.  "She's new," he stated bluntly, looking at Chamomile squarely with his heavily lidded eyes.

        Blinking, she obediently leaned back a little from the bar, hands clasping the polished wood for balance as Joel turned from cheering the football game to clutch her waist a bit more carefully.  She followed the jagged point of his nibbled fingernail, a long finger jutting from the signet ring adorning it religiously, and passed dismissively over a trio of loudly gabbing cheerleaders with her eyes.  A breath hitched in her throat, a reminder of what had happened earlier in the day that stifled her breathing for a second or so, and she closed her eyes briefly to dismiss the image of Ulan swinging his legs back over his barstool.  He was laughing sardonically at the wickedly grinning Natalie, her face mocking him and hands tearing open one of the complimentary packets of crackers scattered over the table in dyed baskets.  

        "That's Natalie Tartan," she said in a pointedly neutral tone, surveying her nails in a manner that was nervous habit.  "She just moved here, and she's very," she thought for a word to describe the air that seemed to follow the redhead, "different."  _Well, wasn't that, like, just so nice, _she remarked to herself in a voice meant to resemble that of the stereotypical valley girl.

        "I can tell," he informed her, resting his elbow on the counter as he absently tapped his cigarette over a napkin he slid over reflexively, sleeve bunched up just above the joint into a wrinkled swath of blue cloth.  His infamous innocent smile, the one that reeked intentions that were most assuredly far from innocent, curled his lips into the faintest exposure of his self-consciously whitened teeth.  "Winchester isn't known for its redheads," he continued in a _just so you know _tone and she laughed, reading correctly what he meant.  "Fine," he rolled his eyes, gravitating toward her, picking the cigarette from his lips once more and holding it at a tilted angle, "but just to reassure you of my affections," he flipped his sweetest, jokingly endearing face to the silver blonde, "she could never replace my love for you."

        She laughed at the old joke as Joel made an unpleasant grunting noise in his throat, eyeing the server with the kind of look usually seen before homicides occurred, and said plainly, "Keep away from my girl."

        "Whiskey, midget," he was answered promptly by The Sandman, a squat bottle of the amber liquid planted flatly in front of him.  The thin blonde bent to stare him in the face, stating evenly, "I know you're underage, she knows you're underage, and if you try to do something stupid like drive after drinking, her pop'll have your head and ass surgically removed before the hitman kills you."  This said, he stuck his cigarette back into his mouth, his duty as casual friend and somewhat responsible supplier of alcohol to the young and not quite innocent done.  "Take it from someone who knows," he added seriously, and his cheeks puffed a little as if he was struggling to keep from laughing.

        Chamomile mouthed _thank-you _at him, and he gave her a longing look from behind the counter, pleading with his eyes for a grateful kiss.  She shook her head no, standing and patting his shoulder comfortingly as he adopted a heartbroken aura, and he sighed, then pushed himself off the counter, scooping up one of the rarely used menus from the stacks of folded laminated paper.  "That reminds me, I need to talk to her," she spoke mostly for Joel's benefit, leaning to kiss his forehead and gently unhooking his arm from her waist.

        "Ah, Chamomile my young and fair love," The Sandman turned from his perusing the menu in fascination, not used to seeing the items he had memorized in print, "please don't scare her off!  I swear I'll be my usual affable self."  He stuck his lower lip out and she wrinkled her nose kindly at him, reaching over to pluck the open menu from his hands and holding it up as she walked as if she had need of researching the meals offered.  

        Wandering over the floor, taking small steps in order to prolong the inevitable confrontation she had chosen, she bit her lip behind the protective shield of the browned paper, tightening her fingers over the slicked surface.  An anxious knot gathered in her stomach as she envisioned being slighted by the smaller girl, and even worse, in front of the boy who was apparently willing to be her closest friend during the months harboring the lazy days betwixt school years, but not during the actual semesters of school.  It always seemed to surprise her, imagining the excitable senior ignoring her or skimming over her existence, and she frowned minutely at the familiar tension as she felt her mind slip towards worrying over him.  _I am apologizing to Natalie, _she reminded herself firmly, sighing as she recognized the bright explosion of orange from the corner of her eye that signified where Ulan was sitting.

        Primly folding the menu with calm hands that belied her internal urge to quaver with nervousness, she held it loosely, casually by her hip, against the smooth fabric of her patterned muumuu.  "Natalie," she started with an edgy smile, and the redhead looked up from chewing plaintively on a cracker as her companion coughed a joke at her.  "I, um, wanted to talk to you about earlier," and her voice wavered, stammering just a bit, and she wished the floor would rear up and fall back on top of her, or something akin to that so long as she stopped making an idiot of herself.  "If it's okay with you," she threw in, barely squashing the urge to rub her bared arm shyly.  It took incredible force of will to even look at him, and she offered a weak smile in apology for something she did not understand herself.  

        Ulan stared at her with a slack face and then glanced quickly down at his palms, picking aimlessly at the weave in the hair-tie wrapped around his wrist.  A lead weight settled quite neatly in her stomach and she swallowed, suddenly reminded of why it was they were only friends when May brought the last day of each school year.  "Sure," she heard Natalie's voice reply, and she snapped her head up to the redhead, who was grinning with some secret meaning.  Natalie glanced meaningfully at the curly-haired teenager, poking him in the shoulder with her fingernail and raising an eyebrow thoughtfully.

        "I wanted to apologize," the petite girl blurted, twisting a strand of her long blonde hair, swathed into a high ponytail, around the knuckle of her index finger.  "That is, I want to apologize, not that I wanted to at some point," and she paused, gently unknotting her hair from her finger and smiling in sheepish recognition at the other's youthfully amused expression.  "I'm babbling, aren't I?" she asked rhetorically, trying to find some place to put her hands and settling for weaving the slender fingers together into a loose knit.

        "Only a little," Natalie answered truthfully, her nose scrunching as she grinned, pinching her fingers together in an exemplifying squeeze of the air.  She laughed at Chamomile's responding grimace, and casually kicked one of the sturdy legs supporting the stool Ulan was seated upon and pretending to not recognize either girl as currently existing in his perception of reality.  "Ulan," she said in her sweetest voice, one dripping with saccharine poison, "I don't think it's polite to not acknowledge someone who's walked all the way over to talk with us."

        If possible, he hunched even further over the bar, picking with a furious purpose at his hair-tie and keeping his head firmly away from her.  Chamomile looked immensely hesitant, popping the heels of her palms together, the menu slapping the stretch of ivory skin in quiet harmony with the movements, and she suddenly appeared lost.  After a few seconds with the three in what felt like a frozen spot in time, she forced a wide, soulless smile onto her face and commented in a falsely bright voice, striking her own ears with an offensive cheer, "No, that's okay, Natalie, I just wanted to get that off my chest."  She waved a small, pointless wave, stepping backwards a few shortened paces, the rustling cloth of her Hawaiian print skirt tugging almost reluctantly at her thighs, and she continued swiftly, "I'm here with Joel, anyway, and I'm sure he's missing me."  Flitting her eyes over the boy stoically unmoving, she twirled and slid down the bar, fleeing to the noise and chaos where her boyfriend awaited.  She blew air out as she straightened her shoulders, convincing herself as she always did, _this is how it's supposed to be_, and she tightened imperceptibly her grip on the smooth menu.

        "That makes it an odd three that you've attempted to ruin my existence today," Ulan remarked matter-of-factly to her as soon as the blonde was gone, turning his comedic glare on Natalie.  She shrugged and smiled charmingly, sticking her tongue out just a bit and placing a cracker innocently into her mouth, kicking his stool lightly with her foot once more.  "Next time," he added, "try wielding a shotgun and a loaded cartridge.  It might be a bit more humane."

        "You're so stupid," she took care to inform him, wrinkling up the wrapper and stacking it with the lopsided hill of small crumbs dotted amidst the crinkled plastic.  "Two days," she held up the corresponding fingers, pinning them as if to arrest his undivided attention, "and I'm smarter than you."

        "Bleh," he responded, making a rude face, and she made the appropriate sound of disgust, instantly relaxing the air into an easier feel to handle.  "Unless you manage to finish your story some time soon, I doubt that," he smirked very kindly, and he flinched with a humorous gasp when she scooped up two of the wrappers, tossing them half-heartedly at his forehead.  "Cheap shot!" he cried.  "Horrible cheap shot!  Why do you insist on trying to kill me?"

        "Why do you insist on tormenting my writing skills?" she retorted, and she flicked several crumbs at him with the side of her hand, a bone in her wrist popping noticeably.  She switched her gaze to the offended joint and lifted it, wobbling her hand slightly and surveying in fascination the lack of change in its movement.  "I thought for sure I'd snapped something."

        "I wish you had," she heard him mutter in jest, and she shoved his shoulder by way of nonverbal reply.  "Oh, crap!" he cried, and then he grabbed on to the bar with a crushing grip, legs splaying awkwardly as the stool tipped in generous warning and he nearly toppled over the neighboring stool beside him.  "I don't want to die," he wheezed, hooking his leg under her stool and using it to lever back into a sitting position.  

        "Oh, darn," she sighed with mock-regret, snapping her fingers as she shook her head sorrowfully, "my evil plan failed."  She stared with a great deal of obvious sadness as he retrieved his foot from under her stool, his hand reaching down to massage the slightly pained stretch of shining material to nurse his poor wounded foot.  "Bowling shoes," she noted flatly, raising in slow disdain her glimmering red eyebrow.

        "What?" he asked defensively, all but clutching his shoe to him in a protective embrace as she began to smile nastily at him.  "So I wear bowling shoes on a daily basis, it's not against the law or anything, unless you live in Washington, DC, or something," and he lowered his foot, a haughty look gracing his face.  "Besides," stated Ulan in an airy, _better than you think I am_ tone, "they give me better grippability."

        Natalie eyed him with something bordering incredulity.  "'Grippability,'" she started slowly, "isn't a word, Ulan.  It's never been a word, it will never be a word, and I'm sorry if I broke your brain when I pushed you earlier."  She paused.  "I think I'm sorry, anyway."

        He ignored skillfully her last tidbit of speech and, instead, lifted one finger in scientific triumph, his lips curling in a _you sad, sad thing _smile of condescension.  "Observe the grippability of bowling shoes," he said simplistically, maneuvering out of his stool and standing perfectly motionless on the glazed floor.  Slowly, carefully, he raised his leg, bending it at the knee, and managed to balance the middle arch of his shoe on the edge of the bar before sliding the bottom slip of the shoe onto the bar itself.  Holding it firmly there, he smirked at her.  "Oops!" he said loudly, and on the other end of the bar, where The Sandman had occupied himself with working the open bar grill, a golden head was raised in a quietly predatory manner.

        Trying to figure out what, exactly, Ulan was attempting to accomplish with sticking his shoe on the counter, threatening his general safety in the most basic of male ways, Natalie spotted a look akin to murderous rampages slowly transforming the elegant face of The Sandman into a brewing storm.  "Well," she said cheerfully, noting the darkly calm way the tall man was setting his various cooking utensils down and the manner of which he was beginning to screw his curled eyebrow toward the long bangs covering his left eye, "I guess it was more or less pleasant knowing you."

        "Wait for it," he answered, lifting his finger a second time, then lowering it peacefully as The Sandman swung aside the one hinged door leading from back area to the front of the restaurant.  "Wait for it," he continued as the taller man stalked forward, his spine curving slightly as he moved like an exceptionally angry feline between the gradually hushing press of teenagers.  "Here we go," he acknowledged with a dip of his head.

        "You _bastard_!" the man she had not yet actually met said in a voice most conventional when issuing large amounts of physical pain.  He slammed a foot into the bar, directing his anger temporarily into it, and she clapped politely for both Ulan, whose shoe had not slipped, and The Sandman, who looked fit to kill in a gruesome way.  "Get your shoe the _hell off my bar!"_

        With lightning speed she did not expect, Ulan complied, and suddenly she found herself being used as a human shield, the fractionally taller tan boy crouching behind her and holding his hands on her shoulders.  "Protect me," he saw fit to instruct her, and she dug her feet into the floor as best she could.

        "What the heck are you doing?" she demanded, trying to reach back with her arms and smack him squarely on the face.  "You jerk!" she said as realization dawned with cruel timing, and she struggled, attempting to twist about and pop him across the face.  "I'm not the one he's mad at!"  
        "Asshole!" The Sandman concurred, before inclining his head gracefully to Natalie.  "My sincerest apologies, my lovely lady," he spoke, plucking the cigarette from his mouth and folding one arm over his chest smoothly.  "I truly do not wish to disturb you, but I'm afraid I must eviscerate your companion."  He looked up, sheaths of golden hair falling away from his glittering blue right eye, and he asked in a peculiar voice, "Your boyfriend, perhaps?"

        "Not quite," she replied, and she gave up trying to poke her friend's eyes out without actually having him in her sights.  "Ulan, what are you doing?"

        "Well," he said breezily, leaning over her shoulder to stare her in the corner of her eye, "I think, at this current moment?  I think I'm avoiding a painful death.  Yup.  Avoiding death, I'm pretty sure."  He ducked an extremely well aimed jab from the still fuming cook and Natalie jumped at the proximity of the fist, stumbling clumsily to the side and falling gracelessly to the floor.  "Shit, Nat," Ulan swore, bending down immediately as the cook mirrored him, both staring anxiously at her while she blinked at the ceiling and lifted her head.

        "I'll consider that payback," she joked without much of a bright smile, and she accepted both hands offered to her, pulling herself to her feet with their help.  Brushing her hands down over her skirt, her jacket tugged down her arms by the unexpected tumble, she thumbed the belt away from the mildly off-kilter positioning it had adopted and smoothed out a thin wrinkle in the fabric of her dress.  Long hands swept lightly and very briefly over her shoulders as Ulan apologized two or five times, and she flipped three of her fingers up at him in tired humor, index, middle, and ring held up for display.  "If you read between the lines," she spoke wearily, "I'll forgive you."

        "Ah, just a bit of dirt right here," the idle tenor of the cook murmured and she looked away from Ulan's sheepish grin to see the much taller man picking free a tiny clump of lint or dirt or something else unpleasant.  "I'm very sorry, my lovely lady," he professed, and she heard Ulan snickering, disguising it with a remarkably pathetic cough.  "It was my fault, really."

        "No," she said slowly, a little uncomfortable, "it was also partly his fault."  She turned slightly, jabbing her thumb carelessly at her friend, who gave her a disbelieving look, saying with his face, _however could you blame me?  "But thanks anyway," she hurried to add, tilting her head back just so to look the pale man straight in the face, or as well as she could, what with his hair misting over one of his eyes._

        He reacted as if stung, for some reason, taking an uncertain step back and jamming his hand into the pocket of his dark jeans as he slipped the cigarette back into his mouth.  "You have gorgeous eyes," he said almost breathlessly and she edged away a bit, unsure of what to make of him.  "Eh, stupid me!" he recovered quickly, smacking his palm into the curled eyebrow over his visible eye and grinning in a way that was far different from Ulan's.

        "No problem," she replied and he nodded, standing in the same spot as if rooted while she twirled and socked Ulan playfully in the arm.

        "Ow," he whined grievously, reclaiming his stool as she did so as well, clasping the injured muscle in his hand and doing his damnedest to appear immeasurably saddened.  "The only other time I've ever been so wounded was when the doctor told me I had an evil twin brother."

        "Liar," she replied conversationally, edging onto her own stool and giving him a particularly dark scowl.  He smiled unashamedly and resumed their adopted habit of picking apart the delightfully noisy wrappers and devouring the crunchy insides with great relish and snapping of jaws.  "I'm not going to forgive you for that, by the way," she told him sweetly, thieving one of his crackers and breaking it into uneven fourths, sticking one on her tongue and pinning it to the roof of her mouth.  Waiting for it to soften, she grinned a grimacing smile at him.

        "Mmmm, I love repetitive food," he sighed gustily, cramming the remaining cracker into his cheek and chewing with loud thought.  "It's sort of like the school food, only I haven't seen anyone's kidneys explode due to horrible, horrible mutations in the genetic structure of the food."  He sighed a second time, this time with massive sadness and an idle crossing of his chest in remembrance, bowing his head for what was meant to be a swift prayer.  "Poor Bill Marks," he informed her, "he was such an obnoxious idiot, too.  The Saturday detention group hasn't been the same without his ever-putrid presence there to foul the oxygen into toxic proportions of noxious fumes."  He paused, swallowing the cracker as a thought appeared to strike him with swift fluidity.  "Actually, I don't think they've ever been so happy before."  He shrugged and took the last wrapper from the now emptied basket, holding it from her as she lunged for it, his tongue sticking briefly out at her.  

        "Jerk," she scowled.  He merely replied with a noisy crunch as he daintily shoved both crackers into his mouth at once and bit down in agonizing slowness, his lips splitting into a malicious grin as she stuck her fingers into her ears and pretended not to hear his cruel bites.

        As such, she noticed very quickly the professional menu that slid onto the counter in front of her, the laminated paper sliding with ease over the relatively clean surface to her.  She studied it, pulling her fingertips from her ears without paying much attention to his attempts at tormenting her, and glanced up _and up and up_ she thought to herself.  The tall cook, The Sandman if she remembered the absurd name correctly, appeared somewhat more collected than he had just five minutes before, his lips curved into a small smile.  "Your menu, my lovely lady," he said, and he winked his right eye in a style that was quite different than the winks she had seen from various others over the course of the past two days.  _At least,_ she mused silently as he walked hastily away in loping steps to the open bar grill where a warning trickle of smoke was beginning to hazard into the air, _I think he winked.  For all I know, he just blinked unusually hard and the hair over his other eye made it so I couldn't tell._

"What make me _his _lovely lady?" she questioned suspiciously, and Ulan switched his face's direction slightly to grant her some fraction of his attention.  "I don't even know him, do I?"  Natalie absently handed one of the empty, balled wrappers to her companion.

        Easily shooting the wrapper into the trashcan, he scooped another one into his palm, patted it shortly, and tossed into an arching tumble straight through to the center of the small receptacle for garbage.  "This _is The Sandman we're referring to," he told her.  A third wrapper was launched with little difficulty squarely into the trashcan.  "I mean, the guy thinks every girl he meets is lovely, for the most part.  Besides, you're single and available, which makes it even better."  He shoved two wrappers together, balling and twisting them into one large, uneven lump, and with a feinted air of disinterest, turned his head to the side, flicking his wrist and sending it in a loose spiral.  "For him," he added in retrospect, turning to stare clinically at the trashcan and nodding curtly once to himself with satisfaction._

        "Me shoot good basket," he explained.

        "Indeed," she raised her eyebrow in sincere reply, flipping a page of the menu and running her finger down the slicked page.  "Sheesh, expensive, much?" she muttered, rolling her eyes as she grimaced, her frugal side peeking its head up and clamping tightly around her wallet.  The next page was viewed as being no gentler on her allotted money spending, and she eyed the menu distrustfully.

        "This is your problem," Ulan interrupted her one-sided glare and pried it from her hands, holding it up to the light.  "See?  Everything you see on these two pages involves something in a different language.  French, Spanish, something that I think I saw a monkey read once, and other assorted languages most people don't know.  Most people being anyone who isn't God, of course," he nodded sagely.  "Never buy anything with weird words in it unless the word are _a la carte_.  Then you buy five of them, pretend you're cultured, and throw away the cheapo box before someone notices."

        "Experienced, are we?" she replied breezily, filching the menu back and closing it, picking open the back flap.  "Oh, look!" she cried in mock-surprise, even going so far as to purse her lips in shock and placing her fingertip cutely to her lower lip.  "Cheeseburgers!  Wowee, golly-gee-willikers, that must be such a trendy delicacy."

        "Don't buy!  Don't buy!" he waved his hands in frantic dissuasion.  At her skeptic look and the way she tucked her strawberry hair behind her curved ear, he found need to define in a lofty tone, "While the seafood at Baratie's is of high enough quality to put such generic places as Red Lobster in their appropriate places, they can't make a cheeseburger worth crap.  It's kinda like Britney Spears music, actually, when I think about it: there's no human way to gouge one's vital organs out fast enough."  He paused to shudder as if recalling some distant, horrid memory, closing his hand around one of the few remaining wrappers and absentmindedly chucking it in the vague direction of the trashcan; she stuck her tongue out when it neatly fell into the filling container.  "Britney Spears is the wife of Satan," he said seriously, running a hand through the few curls lining his forehead, peeking from the folded hem of his checkered bandana.

        "Did you just realize this?" she asked lightly, slipping her jacket off and casting it over the counter in a lumpy line, the ends dangling over the edge.  "Hell, I've known that since she released that first really annoying song.  What was it?"  She frowned, trying to remember, and rolled her eyes up, eyelashes curled in smooth twists, plaguing the ceiling for answers.

        "I liked that one," admitted he forlornly, and then he loudly proclaimed, "'_Hit Me, Baby, One More Time!'"  Upon the decisively questioning look Natalie gave him, complete with her leaning slightly away from him, he stuck his elongated nose in the air and spoke huffily, "That's what it was called, you know."_

        "Of course," she replied kindly.  "I'm just horrifically mortified that you said it so loudly when looking at me."

--

        Chamomile smiled when he returned, cigarette hanging, nearly forgotten, from where he held it clutched betwixt a pair of knuckles, fingers curved slightly inward as if to protect the warm end.  He looked admittedly angry, the sort meant for no one but the person sharing the expression, and he studied with a sour twist of his lips the thickly charred whatever-it-was on the grill.  Still maintaining that intimidating look, he turned and bent his knees, grasping one of the many trashcans lining the back of the bar and standing with an aloof air.  He lifted his free hand and slipped the cigarette back through his lips, tightening his jaw around it.  

        "How did it go?" she asked meekly, almost pulling back from the slowly burning aura he was radiating.  Joel beside her poured with a barely shaking hand another glass of whiskey for himself, his eyes just a bit blearier than earlier.

        "Before or after I made a complete jackass of myself?"  He scraped away the burnt remnants of what might have been shrimp with the blunted side of the spatula he gripped, shepherding the distastefully crispy seafood into the trashcan he held firmly in his other hand.  The ringing thumps that emanated from where the lumped food fell into the plastic abyss were tangible, and he had a gradually smoldering expression on his face, a tic forming in the corner of his jaw as he clenched his teeth dangerously over the cigarette.  "Shit," he swore narrowly, dropping the trashcan and kicking it with admirable restraint so it slid over the boards to rest along the wall.  "I could've done any number of things to impress her, and I say she has nice eyes like some tongue-tied loser?  Jesus Christ!"  He glowered with obvious self-hatred.

        Chamomile said in a hesitant, soothing voice, "It's really not that bad, you know.  As something of a girl myself, I know we like having our eyes complimented.  So long as you didn't sound like you were shocked, though, I'm sure it isn't half as bad as you might think it is."  She sighed and allowed Joel a brief kiss on her cheek, wrinkling her nose slightly at the smell of sour whiskey hefted on his breath.  The Sandman's response was to pass the spatula's edge over the heated grill, forcing away the blackened scraps clinging to the rough surface.  A thoughtless fingertip patted the ashen butt of the cigarette, sending an abrupt stream of fine grey ash tumbling from tube to shot-glass as her husky boyfriend reached for it without paying decent attention to the situation.  "Joel," she started in futile warning, covering her face with one hand as he obliviously tilted the contents of the shot-glass, whiskey and all, into his mouth.  "Oh, dear," she kept her hand clasped over her eyes, fingers curving in imperceptibly to grip the thin hairs of her eyebrows.

        An expression of dawning comprehension, both disgusted and blanching, blossomed on his wide face and he miraculously forced it down his throat before he sputtered, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.  He grabbed a napkin and spat into it, throwing his darkest sneer at the man behind the bar, as she averted her eyes and tried to ignore it.  Curled eyebrow tilting as a threat, he only appeared fractionally more irritated than he had previously, this time with his aggravation directed outwards instead of internalized at himself.  Taking the shot-glass, he stepped back and took in a breath of the scented smoke as Joel lunged, prepared to break the thinner man's nose.  Moving to the side and sloshing a decent amount of the half-emptied bottle into the stained crystal, a flow of dark liquid through the oval mouth, The Sandman shared an unpleasant glare with the football player.  "You _bastard," growled Joel as unfriendly commentary._

        The shot-glass was all but slammed into the bar, a spray of the fermented drink washing over one side as the whiskey lapsed into a momentary tide, and a particular nasty expression took hold of his fine european features, the tic in his jaw leaping in time with his pulse.  "My evening," he said in a voice heavily lace with sinister promise, "is going to hell, I am at least three years your elder, and if you don't shut up," his caliber grew louder, edging into a furious snarl, the cigarette bobbing with inanimate agreement as his lips moved, "I will break my _foot _off in _your goddamn ass!"  He was roaring now, teeth gritted and bared as the cigarette quivered, an unholy extension of his inexplicable rage, and Joel made as if to surge up, fist clenched and elbow cocked at the ready._

        "Oh, my God!" Chamomile interjected hastily, wrapping both of her arms around his to stall his motions and pointing with an urgency she did not feel to one of the shadowed corners.  Several other members of the football team were obscured by the darkness cast at the feet of a string of dim lights occasionally flickering, hovering in a sickly yellow poise at the edge of electrical death as they vainly sought to expose the young men's raucous exploits.  "Sweetie," she melted her violet eyes into a soft puddle that fairly gleamed loving innocence, "I think the guys are having a drinking contest without you.  That's not fair, is it?"

        The response was without error, a quick launch of Joel by his own part to join the unannounced alcohol chug with much hooting, slapping of backs, and the popping of tabs on generic brand beer cans.  "I'll be driving," Chamomile said to the skinny cook with a long-suffering tap of fingernails over the stained counter.

        "That might be wise," concurred her blonde counterpart with a thoughtful dip of his head, slips of gold hair brushing across the pale shell of his ear, his hands busy with carefully smoothing away the spilt drink via a relatively clean rag.

        "Go flirt," she smiled, lifting her warming milkshake and picking the straw out of the gaping top.  Gingerly testing the lukewarm vanilla, creamy texture fading into slimy liquid, she pursed her lips into a disgruntled bow before sipping at the inch or so left, swirling, in the bottom.

--

        Tapping the crumbs fouling the counter with their miniscule presence, Natalie flipped them away with her fingernail, eyeing with great seriousness her aim as she managed to miss every single spot she was targeting.  The only thing saving her dignity was the fact that her friend had no idea she was trying to do anything other than simply waste time awaiting the return of The Sandman, and so she continued attempting to hit at least one of the wine bottles poised elegantly in their racks.  "I'm bored," she announced, missing the next crumb altogether and simply sliding the pad of her finger over the slick counter.  "Say something weird so I can mock you."

        "Pass the fried beans and the naked monkey, please?" suggested Ulan, leaning over and smacking with his palm three of the crumbs; they struck a bottle with soundless power, and she summoned a glower to hold momentarily on her features.  "That reminds me somehow," he said as if the thought had just struck him, pulling his hand back when she pretended to slap it with her jacket, the cloth enveloped in her hands, "you know those animal rights activists?  The ones that go around proclaiming how animals have every right that humans have and so on?"  She nodded after a moment, settling her jacket in her lap and tucking the limp black sleeves in with the glistening leather, and he had a grave look on his face, round eyes serious and mouth pulled into a severe line.  "Has any one of them ever noted how obscene it is for an animal to walk around naked?  I mean, my God, if someone like Missus Walston, my sincerest apologies to her I mean no disrespect, walked around naked, can you imagine the levels of ritualistic suicide in town?"  He snorted in amazement, resting his elbow on the counter and his chin, in turn, on his loose fist.  "Those poor horses, no clothes or anything.  It's downright shameful!"

        She stared at him, one eyebrow slowly, steadily, making its way up in a lean angle toward her hairline.  "I can't even make fun of that, it's so weird," she informed him affectionately, patting his shoulder in a manner that cried _you poor dear, one day they'll get you help._

        "I feel so alone," he whimpered, balling his eyebrows together and giving her a pitiful look. 

        "Don't worry," she spoke condescendingly.  "There's a nice place with white ceilings and padded walls, and they have these pleasant little jackets.  You won't have to be alone there."

        His mood switched from mockingly depressed to mockingly reproving, and he replied, his tone fairly reeking _been there, done that, "Nope.  The fruit cocktails are semi-rancid.  Rancid is nasty-icky-icky-gross."  He made a face to illustrate his standpoint in the current topic, pulling away from his fist and uncurling his fingers to wiggle them in disgust, elbow still stiffly held on the glazed counter for balance and lack of remembering it was there.  _

        "You said icky twice," she pointed out, placing her hand over the crumbs remaining and gently scooping them toward the inner side of the bar, pushing the fall of tiny bread off.  "That's overkill."

        "So is three movies starring Susan Sarandon in one year, but you don't hear anybody complaining about that," he responded intellectually, his index finger wagging as he spoke as if to further his opinion.  "Well, nobody other than my mom and maybe that weirdo at the deli," he conceded after a moment, absently tucking his finger back to himself.  "He freaks me out.  Did you know," he changed subjects twice in the same breath of air, his words flipping from one topic back to the first, "she was also in that Children of Dune special on SciFi?  She played a bitch, suitably enough."

        "I like Susan Sarandon," Natalie defended, flicking away the line of crumbs that had devoutly stuck to the winding side of her palm and wrist.  "She's a pretty good actress, you know.  Besides, I stay away from miniseries' based on books, because they inevitably butcher the storyline."

        "Eh," he shrugged, nudging his bandana back a bit with his thumb, the checkered cloth stark against his dark honey skin and the black curls, "it was decent.  I think the ending was a little overly dramatized and all, but it was better than it might have been.  Just imagine: Steve Kloves adapting the books by Frank Herbert.  My life would be ruined."

        She stared blankly at him, missing the cultural joke as he waited expectantly for commiseration, and she decided against ad-libbing her own dislike of the man, instead opting to question vaguely, "Steve Kloves?"  

        "He adapted the first Harry Potter movie," prodded Ulan and she brightened.

        "He's the dumbass that messed up the book?" she gasped in angry realization, narrowing her eyes as he nodded in grim accompaniment.  "Aren't there laws demanding he be shot publicly for such a deed?"  

        "Should be," he sighed, turning his head slightly to glance over the menu she had pinned under her forearm, the corner peeking away from her flared scarlet sleeve.  "Here he comes," he added, and she straightened fractionally, picking the menu from beneath her arm and shaking it gently to dissuade the scant dusting of crumbs from clinging to it.

        Before the tall, slender man with perfectly combed gold hair could say anything, she stabbed her hand out, fingers arched back just a bit in peaceful offering, and he stared at it, the cigarette in his mouth trailing soft apple-breathing smoke whispered into a lacing river by the air conditioning.  He had paused in his introspective motions of folding his hand in the white apron pinned over his blue shirt and black jeans, using the clothed hand to wipe the upturned palm of its partner.  "I got the feeling you were kind of upset when you left earlier," she said with her brightest smile as Ulan looked at her, his face clearly saying he thought she had just killed her brain and disposed of the evidence somewhere random, "so I wanted to apologize."  The startling blue eye under the corkscrew eyebrow streamed over to stare at her in a form that was both unnerving and calming, and a wide grin, too delighted to be similar to Ulan's toothier one, swirled over his thin lips.

        "No need to apologize," he caught her hand up anyway, fingers plying about her wrist and twisting her hand so the smooth back was facing him, "as it was my fault."  He dipped his head, pressing his lips to her knuckles in a whisper of skin and mildly chapped lips, and she opened her mouth, snapping it shut as she tried to decide what possible way she could react.  Pulling her hand back when he released it, a brilliant smile peaking slyly at the corner of his mouth, the faintest sliver of teeth visible between the barely split lips, he winked quickly again.  "Now, what would you like to eat?"

        She blinked and flipped open the menu, thankful for the distraction from her off-put mixture of annoyance and delight, streaking her finger down the listed foods in the back until she paused at one of the titles marked as an appetizer.  "The dough thingie on page seven," she said, turning the menu around and sliding her pointer to angle down at it as he leaned his length over, two fingers landing on either side of his cigarette as he scanned the blurb for it.  "Whatever it is," and she gave up trying to describe it, much to Ulan's slightly sadistic amusement.  "Shut up," she ordered him, and he proceeded to mime cackling, holding his hand over his mouth sneakily.

        "Ah!" cried The Sandman, standing straight with his forefinger and thumb in the pocket of his jeans, the apron pushed aside a little, fingers still framing his cigarette.  Remembering to lower his hand, he said cheerfully, "A fun choice, that.  If you will come down to the open grill, I can show you how to make it."  He had a sneakily hopeful look on his face, one that seemed to be honest and somehow calculated in an emotional style, and she looked at Ulan for assistance.

        He was currently engrossed in rethreading his hair-tie, the inside of his wrist turned up to face the ceiling, and was thusly no help at all.  

        "That sounds nice," she smiled, and she stared at the cook's back as he receded to the swinging floor-to-ceiling door that led directly to the kitchen.  "He kissed my hand," she reaffirmed herself as she thought, wondering if this was something she could utilize to her advantage.

        "I could've done that," Ulan replied sulkily, having decided his hair-tie was a mindlessly lost cause and useless, trying to pull his thumb from the knot it had gotten entangled with.  "Crap," he groaned under his breath, slipping the hair-tie off and ripping the appendage free.  He sheepishly tucked the hair-tie back over his hand, adjusting it over his wrist and keeping his nails safely away from the strings.

        Natalie simply stared at him with a sympathetically saddened expression.

        "I _could have, but that's not to say I _would _have," he furthered, sliding off the stool and nudging aside several curls where they had fallen across his shoulder.  "I could also very well be a transvestite at some point, but I won't."_

        "That's much better," she nodded, abandoning her stool as well, and she tucked her arm over her jacket, bunching the leather together and pinning it to her hip.  "I suppose it's better, in any case.  Transvestite?"

        "First word that popped into my head," he answered, closing his eyes briefly and sniffing in an injured fashion.  "No need to ridicule my absurd mental dictionary slash thesaurus."  

        She laughed, grabbing his arm and pulling him down the rows of stools filled with teenagers in various states of socializing, and she quickened her pace so as to reach the grill sooner.  "Silly, crazy Ulan Harris," she clucked, shaking her head sadly while he crossed his eyes at her in an ill attempt at an odd glare.  "So sad, so bad, oh well.  At least the funny doctors in the white coats will treat him with respect and large doses of euphoric medication."

        Ulan merely offered her a friendly obscene hand gesture and she gasped in mock-offense, slugging his shoulder playfully and taking the middle stool in front of the grill without looking about her.  He rubbed his upper arm with a trembling lower lip and adopted the seat to her right, thumbing his nose and sharing a nasty glare with The Sandman.  The slender blonde missed it completely, being consumed with his task of bringing out various materials from an unseen cabinet of unknown proportions: flour, bags of something or other, a few unlabeled boxes of what they assumed were spices.  

        "Um, hi," Chamomile said shyly from Natalie's left, and the duo nearly pulled muscles in their individual necks they turned so quickly.  She winced and felt her smile falter just a bit at the completely frozen look on Ulan's face, finding the stubborn reserve inside to burst her smile brighter, and she looked him squarely in the face as if challenging him.  "How are you both doing?" she asked firmly, and Natalie's lips slowly curved into a fractionally quelling glimpse of something.

        "Perfectly fine," she said in a voice that was coated in sugar, swiveling her head around to face Ulan, who looked right back at her with a blank expression.  "Aren't we, Ulan?" as she dug her elbow sharply into his arm.

        "Urk?" he articulated.

        Before Natalie could kill him on basic principle of male stupidity, the sound of wax paper being torn with fine expertise interrupted and she turned to see a long sheet of the waxy paper falling into place over the cooled grill.  "Sorry if Pinocchio was answering an important question," he smiled disarmingly, and Ulan, checking to see if anyone could see, flipped his middle finger up, shielding it from sight of the girls.  Smoothing his pale hands over the paper, forcing it to lie flatly on the metallic grill, he lifted a small ring of masking tape and quickly tore off three lengths of it.  "Hey," he scowled at the one boy in the three, "set these on evenly along your side of the grill."

        Pulling a notably rude face and giving it straight to The Sandman, he proceeded to do so with jerking motions; The Sandman made no attempt to hide his own single-finger salute, joining it with a sharp bite of his lower lip and a lowering of his visible eyebrow.  "Done," Ulan all but sneered, resting his arms on the thin stretch of counter before the grill took completely over the side.  "Peachy?"

        A particularly dirty word followed that caused Chamomile to slap her hands over her ears and Natalie to pinch her nose as if commenting it was odorous.  

        "Right back up yours," replied Ulan congenially, folding his hands together, fingers weaving over one another.  "And then some, just for the hell of it."  

        The flour was dumped over the waxen paper, a mentally measured cascade of the clumpy ivory that was cut off with a careful jerk of the bag up, leaving a small hill of it resting plainly on the paper.  He folded the bag up quickly, ripping away a strip of the masking tape and attaching it to hold the heavy bag closed, and shifted it to the side, on the shelf under the counter.  "Switch seats with the lady," he demanded of Ulan.  "If something should spill, I would prefer it land on you instead of the lovely Natalie." 

        "Oh, isn't that sweet?" Natalie said brightly, smiling prettily at the cook and twisting about to share it with Ulan.  He was nowhere near as welcoming of it as The Sandman had been, and he, disgruntled, jumped from his stool, shoes squeaking audibly on the floor as he exchanged positions with her.  "Thank-you _so much," she continued in her sugary voice.  "After all, this is my sister's dress, and I could never live with myself if anything got on it."_

        "So selfless!" commented the cook, a twitching grin on his lips, and he scattered some of the spices over the flour, a steady sprinkling of red and dark browns that mingled with the white when he worked his hands into it.  The dry mixture was spread out a bit, and he did concede to keeping it from flickering over even Ulan, tucking the blend of delicate spices and bland flour back into a lump in the center of the paper.  Shaking his powdered hands, he turned his head to the side and, gingerly grasping the tubing of his cigarette between two fingernails, dumped his cigarette into the trashcan he had kicked back over, letting it fall into the container by his foot.  

        "What's he doing?" Natalie leaned forward to peer into Chamomile's face; the other girl bent forward, her elbow brushing against Ulan's lower arm, and he moved hastily back to grant them easier access to one another.  The Sandman, muttering something under his breath, twisted on his heel and scooped up a waiting measuring cup, filling it with steaming, clear water from the metal storage system marking where the wine rack began.  He turned, holding it carefully with his other hand forming a curved base under it, and strode in his long movements back to the covered grill.

        "It's basically edible clay," explained Chamomile, and she returned to her normal stance to allow Ulan room to move back.  "Like Play-Do, only it tastes good."

        "No burning of tongue?" asked Natalie idly.

        "Of course not," The Sandman spoke indignantly, cautiously threading the water in the clenched measuring cup into the stacked blend of dry powders.  Satisfied with the dampness seeping through the entirety of the miniaturized mountain, he plunged his bare hands straight into it without flinching at what surely must have been an uncomfortably heated feel by Natalie's estimations.  "What kind of cook would ever serve anything so distasteful?"  He scoffed, molding the mixture together as he evened out the texture and thickness, lumping it around and over in folds as it began to adopt the same overall feel to it.  "I could never do such a thing," he continued with a sense of finality, bringing his side-turned palms together, squeezing up a brief fountain of the swiftly developing dough.

        "That's a relief," Natalie smiled, and he looked up at her, that same tilted smile coloring his own lips.  "How do you know when it's done?"

        His response was to pick free a small amount of the lightly reddened dough and hand it to her, motioning with his sticky hand for her to taste it.  Hesitating, she stared dubiously at it, until Ulan poked her with his finger and she, rolling her eyes, popped it unceremoniously onto her tongue, closing her mouth.  The flavor was an odd quilt of sheer chewy texture and chocolate-tinted spiciness, and she worked it under her molars for a few seconds before swallowing and waiting to see if it triggered any instantaneous negative body reaction.  "Is there cocoa mix in this?" she asked, feeling what little was left in her mouth and wondering slightly at it.

        "Yes," he looked pleased, and she gave him a thumbs-up.  "Ah, good then.  Take a bit more, then, each of you.  Even you," and he glared icily at Ulan, who replied with a customary flash of his tongue.  "That was real mature," The Sandman snorted and the other boy shrugged, reaching up and pulling a sizable chunk of the dough free.  Chamomile mirrored his actions, though her motions were a bit gentler and she took a much smaller portion of the lumped mixture as Natalie stole some.

        "Not trying to be," answered Ulan, working his fingers into the dough he had stolen, shaping it distantly into a few simple shapes.  "Besides, maturity is far too overrated."

        "So is bachelorhood," Natalie murmured to him, winking her eye almost too quickly to be caught, and he frowned a tiny downward twitch of his pouty lips.  "This is actually pretty tasty," she admitted to The Sandman in a louder voice, straightening away from her friend and looking the blue-eyed man directly in his face, her smile charming.  "How much is it?"

        "For someone as beautiful as you?" he sighed.  "Free."

        She made a show of squealing happily and nibbling at the dough, the very image of flattered femininity complete with fluttering eyelashes and peeking smile.  _Damn, _she grinned inside.

        Ulan picked distractedly at his dough, just as awkwardly as Chamomile was holding hers without showing any signs of movement.  Sparing a glance at the girl he had decided was flawless and wholly perfect, in his vision, and therefore it must be a fact, he made his mind up and quickly began molding the dough.  A lopsided head somewhat similar to that of a crocodile emerged, and he stuck his thumbs decisively into it for eyes, pinching his fingers and pulling down in the subtly gaping jaw for crooked teeth.  Then, holding it up as he might a sacrifice, he nodded and yelled, "Holy freakin' shit, it's attacking me!"  

        Natalie stared, overwhelmed by the urge to either smack herself in the face, him in the face, or both and quietly exit.  What she did not expect was, as he pretended his goopy creation was devouring his jugular and The Sandman said the kind of things usually not heard in polite conversation, Chamomile to start giggling.

        "Maybe there is hope for you after all," she said to the back of his head as he began a relatively normal conversation with the wide-eyed girl.  She bit into the dough she held in her hand, picking at the thread of it wandering down the inside of her wrist and dangerously close to her sleeve.

--

**Notes: **Not as much Sanji as I was going to have, but…such it is.  I decided that a few conversations of admirable length I had planned on putting in at this point will be postponed for later parts and shifted around so they make more sense.  Is that okay, all?

**Names: **No new ones that I'm aware of.  (But I did have one in part two that you'll learn of later.)

**Pop Culture References: **Britney Spears, Susan Sarandon, SciFi, Frank Herbert and all that entails, and Harry Potter.  Apparently, all were used in insults…*sweatdrops*  Other than Britney Spears and a bit of Susan Sarandon's work, I personally have nothing against any.  ;]  Oh, yeah!  And Play-Do!  0o;

**Disclaimer: ***sighs*

**Feedback: **I feel the love.

**Written: **April 9-12, 2003.

**Revised: **April 14, 2003.  (One spelling mistake and a reference.  Mwahahaha!  I'm getting better at this.  I think.)

**Thanks: **Ooo!  Reviews!  *huggles self with cuddly joy*  I feel so flattered!  :]  SaturnOolaa, who made me feel really good about my writing (I've been trying to keep everyone characterized reasonably well and whatnot, and that helped oodles).  Kaze no beru, whose reviews are fun all around (and both Zoro and Luffy will appear, but not for a while yet; I did make some very sneaky references to what they'll be in part-the-third…).  And Nik!  Who reviewed _four times!  I nearly died from sheer happiness (I loved your Tashigi introspection piece), and I apologize for not having half as much Sanji'n'Nami interaction as I wanted in this part…  I think, though, everyone likes Usopp (which is __excellent, as he is my favoritest OP character *winks*).  :]  Reading all the reviews made me feel so happy!  _

**Next: **The nightmare (really!), a trip to NYC (finally!), and some honest-to-goodness, one-on-one interaction between Sanji and Nami.  Really – I swear!  ;|)


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